CASE MANAGEMENT IN THE SUPREME COURT
ENTERS THE “AGE OF AUTOMATION”
Information on case status is a “click away” from your study

1. Information about weekly and daily cause lists and cases before the benches is now available in the Supreme Court website, www.supremecourt.gov.np. Sitting in your study or office you can get information about the latest status of the progress of a case at seven to eight benches of the Court in session daily to hear and decide the case on a particular date. The bench officer in the room updates status of a case once the hearing progresses in the bench.

2. The Fiscal Year 2004-2005 was the first year of the implementation of Judiciary’s Five-Year Strategic Plan, the first ever initiative for a planned development of the Judiciary in Nepal. It identified sixteen Strategic Interventions to achieve its mission of fair and impartial justice. Implementing an effective case management system was one of the intervention programs identified by the Plan.

3. The beginning of a three-year USAID Nepal Rule of Law Project coincided with the first year of the Plan. Following consultation with the Supreme Court the USAID Project developed programs for strengthening the Judiciary that covered 11 out of 16 Intervention Strategic Intervention areas of the Plan.

4. USAID supported the Supreme Court’s initiative for developing and implementing an effective case management system to reduce delay and case congestion in the Court. The Court, with the leadership and determination of the justices and court officials and staff, was able to achieve a phenomenal success in 2005 and 2006, the first two years of the Strategic Plan in reducing backlogs of cases in the Court by over 20 percent. The backlogs, as a result, came down to a level of 14,000 from 18,000 cases in 2004. In 2005-06 the Court disposed over 8,153 cases, the highest in thirteen years. In 2004-05 the Court decided 7,494 cases.

5. USAID in 2005 helped the Court in preparing more than 1,000 case briefs out of 1,400 plus cases pending over a period of five year, and the number of such cases came down to a level of 100 by mid-2006.

6. In the meantime the Court, with its own resources, procured more than 300 computers, installed a system of network and connected all these computers in the rooms and benches of the Court. The Court developed and installed software for entering basic information about the case. Now the parties or any interested person can get the latest information in his or her computer on the progress of hearing of a case in the bench. The US Embassy in Nepal provided 60 computers and necessary equipments to the Supreme Court in 2005 for distribution to the district courts.

7. In June 2006 USAID started a ten-month program of training in system operation and system management for over 150 court staff and data entry of live cases collected earlier manually by the court staff themselves. With the completion of data entry the Court has been able to introduce the automated system of case management in the Court. A local computer company has been providing the services of software and network computer experts through the help of USAID Rule of Law Project.
8. The Court is now moving to a second phase of case management where all the sixteen courts at appellate level will be connected through a network to be developed. With a view to preparing the Patan Appellate Court for the second phase of case management USAID has made available 22 computers and other office equipments and completed installing a network. It has also helped the Court by hiring a local company to provide a month-long refresher training courses to 21 court staff on basic and advance courses on windows, word, excel and internet and network in January 2007.