KATHMANDU, AUGUST 28
The Supreme Court launched the automation-based cause list from today.
Nepal Bar Association had been demanding for long that the cause list should be based on computer-based automation. Newly-appointed Chief Justice Bishowambhar Prasad Shrestha had pledged to launch the much-awaited automation-based cause list.
Spokesperson for the SC Bimal Paudel told THT that the automation-based cause list would make sure that the cases are listed for final hearing in accordance with the case filing date. This means an older case will be listed for final hearing first.
"An automation-based cause list eliminates the role of court employees for listing cases for final hearing. This system will also address those people's concerns who were accusing the court employees of favouring some cases for final hearing and according less priority to the older ones," he added.
The automation-based cause list would, however, not assign cases to judges. The current practice of assigning cases to judges on the basis of a lottery will continue for sometime.
Paudel said that the court would take some time to go for automaton-based assignment of cases to the judges.
Senior advocate and former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association Purnaman Shakya said that an automation-based cause list would prevent the court employees from favouring and disfavouring case parties.
"We have seen in the past that court employees were assigning a final hearing date to favour some case parties while disfavouring others. From now on, court employees will have no role in listing the case for final hearing," Shakya said, adding that they would like the SC to go for full automation so that everything from case listing to bench assigning could be done on the basis of automation.
He said SC justices had shared with him that they wanted to delay the process of assigning cases to the justices through the automation-based system as some justices were apprehensive that IT specialists could manipulate the system to favour and disfavour case parties.
Shakya said that the SC justices were more confident with the lottery-based case assignment as the lotteries are picked in front of them.
Paudel said that the automation-based cause list would be enforced in the lower courts - district courts and high courts - later after observing the success of the automation-based cause list in the apex court.
The Supreme Court has a high case load with 27,800 cases to adjudicate. Out of these, 4,300 cases are five-year-old cases. The SC has a plan to list these five-year-old cases for final hearing within the next two years.
For the last few years, the SC has been listing cases for final hearing by categorising cases into similar groups.
A version of this article appears in the print on August 29, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
