e-Courts Phase III is India's national mandate for digital justice: a Central Sector Scheme approved by the Union Cabinet on 13 September 2023 with a financial outlay of ₹7,210 crore over four years from 2023. Where Phases I and II wired up courts and put case data online, Phase III is designed to make the court process itself digital — from filing to hearing to the record.
What is the e-Courts Project?
The e-Courts Mission Mode Project is the Government of India's programme for ICT-enabling the judiciary, run under the Department of Justice with the e-Committee of the Supreme Court of India. Phase I (from 2007) computerised courts; Phase II (from 2015) connected them, created the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) for live pendency data, and rolled out e-filing, e-payments and virtual courts. Phase III builds on that base.
What does Phase III fund?
At a high level, the phase invests in five things practitioners will feel directly:
- Digitisation of court records — legacy case files and judgments made machine-readable, so the record is searchable rather than stored.
- Digital-first filing and process — e-Filing as the default path, e-Sewa Kendras for citizens who need assisted access, and paperless proceedings inside the courtroom.
- Virtual and hybrid hearings — the pandemic-era capability made permanent infrastructure rather than an exception.
- A unified, cloud-based data layer — a single judicial data repository feeding NJDG-style dashboards for judges, registries and the public.
- Emerging technology — AI and machine learning for scheduling, transcription, translation and legal-research assistance, applied with a human decision-maker in the loop.
What changes for lawyers and litigants?
Three practical shifts. First, where a case lives moves from a registry counter to a portal: filing, defects, listing and orders become status you can see. Second, data becomes a management tool — pendency by bench, stage and age is visible, which changes how listing and disposal are planned. Third, the skills that matter change: registry staff, bar clerks and advocates need to work a digital case lifecycle fluently, which is why capacity-building sits alongside software in every serious rollout.
Where do tribunals fit?
e-Courts governs the court system, but the same design pattern is now visible in India's tribunals. The GST Appellate Tribunal (GSTAT) launched in September 2025 as the first Indian tax tribunal to run its full case lifecycle online; NCLT and DRT have their own e-filing systems. The lesson from all of them is the same: a digital tribunal is a workflow and a training programme, not just a website.
Why this is Digital Public Infrastructure
India's DPI approach — shared, rules-based digital rails such as Aadhaar and UPI that many parties build on — maps naturally onto justice. A common filing rail, a common data grid and common identity for parties and practitioners let courts, tribunals, the Bar and citizens use one infrastructure instead of many silos. Phase III is the funding and mandate that make that possible for the courts.
Figures (approval date, outlay and duration) are from the Union Cabinet's decision of 13 September 2023 as reported by the Press Information Bureau and the District Courts of India. Programme components are summarised at a general, public level.