The Supreme Court on Friday said that it is planning to implement a scheme at the earliest, where the jail can verify orders directly from the courts through an online portal.
A Special bench of Chief Justice N.V. Ramana, Justice L. Nageswara Rao and Justice A.S. Bopanna noted, “This court has passed orders releasing the prisoners, but they were not released, stating that they have not received the authentic copy of the order.”
The Supreme Court had taken suo motu cognisance of the delay being caused in the release of convicts after granting of bail on the ground that the jail authorities did not receive the authentic copy of the court order.
The Chief Justice said, “We are under contemplation of a scheme called FASTER: Fast and Secure Transmission of Electronic Record. It is meant to communicate all orders to concerned jail authorities without waiting.”
Whereas, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta contended, “This is not right Milords, but there are instances where people take wrong orders and that’s why it is necessary to authenticate.”
However, the Chief Justice further said, “It is the time of Information and technology, it may be verified. We’ll try to implement the scheme at the earliest, where all the orders are directly verified by the jail.”
The bench has directed the Secretary-General of the Supreme Court to frame the scheme and submit a report and check if the jails were equipped with internet, so that the orders were implemented. The Court also sought responses from all the State governments over jails having Internet connectivity, as transmission would otherwise become impossible.