TAKE AI’S HELP FOR SPEEDY JUSTICE

FEW phrases encapsulate the despair of the Indian litigant more powerfully than Sunny Deol's anguished outburst in Damini: "Tareekh pe tareekh" (hearing after hearing).

- ADITYA SINHA

It has become a cultural shorthand for the chronic paralysis of our judicial system, endless adjournments, interminable delays and an ever-mounting docket of cases. It is a significant erosion of the constitutional covenant that justice shall be accessible, effective and timely'.

The consequences extend beyond individual hardship. A significant portion of these are civil disputes on the enforceability of contracts, sanctity of property rights, and predictability of commercial relations. Their prolonged pendency corrodes business confidence, undermines the ease of doing business, and exacts a measurable toll on India’s economic growth.

Judicial efficiency itself remains a serious concern. One promising pathway to address this lies in the adoption of artificial intelligence—not as a panacea, but as a force multiplier to streamline processes, reduce delays, and assist judges in decision-making without compromising judicial wisdom.

Civil disputes form the bulk of pendency and have the most direct bearing on economic growth. AI deployment here must prioritise throughput and standardisation. For example, in case triage. Machine learning classifiers can categorise cases by complexity and urgency. China’s ‘intelligent case division’ sorts routine matters into simplified workflows, while Estonia uses AI to automatically issue simple payment orders. In India, cheque dishonour matters—which constitute a significant share of criminal dockets, but are quasicivil in nature—could be diverted to automated or semi-automated streams, freeing judges for complex disputes.