MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE - GURGAON

Post-Graduate Programme in Management

PGPM: 2019-21 Batch Term: II (Sep-Dec 2019)

Operations Management
Submission Deadline:
21/12/2019 Minor Project Weightage: 10%
Course Faculty: Prof. (Dr.) Manoj K Srivastava

PGPM 2019-21
Section

B
Adaption of Focused Management in the
Indian Judicial System with the aid of AI
(Toolware CD Included)

OM
Minor Project

Name of Group Members: (In Ascending ID)

1 19P062 Karan Rajeev Arora
 2 19P063 Aarushi Gupta
3 19P076 Ashish Bhardwaj

Submission Date: 21 Dec 2019

AAB

ABSTRACT
TABLE OF CONTENTS
 INTRODUCTION

It was 1986 when the then Chief Justice of India P.N. Bhagwati said that, “The Judicial
System is on the Verge of Collapse”1 and it is 2019 when this discourse is still relevant and to
the extent that, present Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court Govind Mathur recently shared
his thoughts on it2.
Indian Judicial System is a complex system under immense stress where input far exceeds the
output. Number of cases that are instituted every year exceed the number of cases which the
system can currently dispose of.

Comparison of number of cases that are

instituted and disposed by District Courts
in India3

It is possible for the judicial system to dispose of majority of the cases in lesser time. Even in
the current system over 41% of cases are resolved at the district level within a year. It might
be possible to increase this percentage if bottlenecks are identified and then removed.

Time taken
to dispose
of a case4

1
Hegde, S. (1987), “Limits to reform: A critique of the contemporary discourse to judicial reform in India”,
Journal of the Indian Law Institute, Vol. 29 No. 2, pp. 153-163
2
Times of India Article available at: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/udaipur/judicial-system-wont-
collapse-says-cj-of-allahabad-hc/articleshow/72628952.cms
3
Graph available on the National Judicial Data Grid – District and Taluka Courts of India Pending Dashboard.
https://njdg.ecourts.gov.in/njdgnew/?p=main/pend_dashboard
4
Graph available on the National Judicial Data Grid – District and Taluka Courts of India Disposed Dashboard.
https://njdg.ecourts.gov.in/njdgnew/?p=disposed_dashboard/inde
 LITERATURE REVIEW
The reasons for delayed justice in India are many-fold and various studies have been
conducted to identify and analyze these reasons.
NALSAR (2016)5 cited following as the cause for the delays “a) Paucity of judges and court
staff b) Inefficiency of the case management system c) Apathy towards use of technology in
justice deliverance d) Absence of work culture in court rooms e) Predominance of
Adjournment culture in litigation f) Poor judges to population ratio (1 judge in every million)
g) Inadequate infrastructure and ill-trained court staff”. The study also suggested increasing
number of judges, specified timeframes for cases and efficient case management using
technology.
IIM Calcutta Professors Babu, Basu & Bose (2019)6 suggested that, long adjournment
periods, increasing efficiency of court staff, outsourcing, use of digital technology, round the
clock court services, increasing the number of judges, managerial training for judicial
officers, fixing 5 years as time period for disposal of cases, and increase in average number of
judges and staff should be considered for improving court efficiencies.
These studies have been able to identify problems causing delays in the Indian Judicial
system and have suggested corrections accordingly. However, it may also be beneficial to
look at the judicial system through the lens of Operations Management.
Niv, Liber & Ronen (2010)7 suggested using Focused Management philosophy to improve
efficiency of the court systems. As per the authors Theory of Constraint, JIT/Lean
philosophy, Complete Kit Concept and Global Decision-Making Methodology can be
adapted to the adjudication system. The paper also recognized Judges as bottlenecks as more
cases are filed than filed. Authors suggest transferring work from Judges to non-critical
resources such as legal aides, interns, legal helpers or administrative staff. Paper also suggest
transferring cases to Alternative Dispute Resolution Mechanism (This is already practiced in
India).
These researches have not dealt with the possibility of automating certain processes using AI.
It may not be able to produce the same level of quality with non-judicial staff or by
increasing work pressure on the judges. However, AI may be able to deliver standardized
quality output for certain tasks.

5
NALSAR University of Law (2016), “A Study On Court Management Techniques For Improving The
Efficiency Of Subordinate Courts”, Submitted to Department of Justice Ministry of Law & Justice GOI.
Available at: https://doj.gov.in/sites/default/files/Final%20DOJ%20Report_Revised%20%281%29.pdf
6
Babu R., Basu S. & Bose I (2019), “Study of Court processes and Re-engineering Opportunities for Improving
Court efficiencies for Justice Delivery in India” Submitted to Department of Justice Ministry of Law & Justice
GOI. Available at: https://doj.gov.in/sites/default/files/IIm%20Kolkata.pdf
7
Niv M. B., Lieber Z. & Ronen B. (2010), “Focused Management in a Court System: Doing more with the
existing resources”, Human System Management 29 265-277
 Project Objective

Through this project it may not possible to identify and suggest changes for all bottlenecks
which may be hindering the Judicial System from functioning at it’s full potential, however,
we wish to attempt to present a starting point.
We shall be looking at the judicial system as a system where operation is not running at full
potential. We fill be further narrowing down our focus only on one resource ‘the judge’ and
the total amount of time which a judge may have to dispose all the cases before him or her.
The rationale behind it is that, a Judge being a highly skilled professional it is not easy to
increase their number while maintaining a certain degree of quality. We wish to provide ways
to automate, using AI, certain work done by a judge. Thereby allowing him or her to attain
higher level of efficiency when measured using disposal rate.
We wish to limit our project from another side. There are numerous subject matters that the
judicial system has to deal with and hence there are different courts following different
procedures. We will only be focusing on District Civil Courts and only on procedure for
ordinary Civil Suits.
 FRAMEWORK DEVELOPMENT

Borrowing from Niv, Liber & Ronen (2010) we will adapt focused management to the
judicial system in the following manner:

Sl. Metric Measurable Variable Measured as

1. System Goal Dispute Resolution Dispute is resolved / pending (1/0)
2. Throughput Cases Closed Number of such cases
3. WIP Inventory Pending Cases Number of such cases
4. Lead Time Time taken for resolution Measured in unit of time (hours)
5. Resource Constraint Judge’s Time Measured in unit of time (hours)

We are aware that there may be many more constraints, however, for the sake of simplicity
we shall be confined to judge’s time. Argument here is that, judge’s time is divided between
core activities and non-core activities. Judge being a highly skilled resource which can’t be
increased in a short span of time acts as a bottleneck in the system.

Further, increasing the number of judges may be considered an option after attaining a lean
system i.e. a system with near to optimal efficiency. For various non-core activities, we are
suggesting using AI to quicken the process and allowing judges to devote their time to the
core activities, thereby increasing the throughput.

There may be technological and policy constraints as of today, but this project has been
written to provide a starting point in this direction. Government is also looking forward to
establishing virtual courts and supreme court is looking to implement AI for non-court
activities.

AI model is being executed in certain European countries. 8 Netherlands setting up E-court

2010 which delivered judgements to a Hungarian model which allowed AI to aid the process
and is far more non-controversial.

Hungarian Model9

“Hungarian courts offer (and, in some cases, requires) e-procedures which allow clients to
submit their documents electronically and the court to communicate with clients. The courts
also accept administration complaints via e-forms and to make court administration even
more convenient, there is an electronic notification system to remind clients of delivery of
important files and procedural steps. Another level of the digitalisation of courts is the e-
8
Gyuranecz F.Z., Krausz B. & Papp D. (2019), “The AI is now in session – The impact of digitalization on
courts”, published on European Judicial Training Network’s (EJTN) website. Available at:
http://www.ejtn.eu/PageFiles/17916/TEAM%20HUNGARY%20TH%202019%20D.pdf
9
Ibid at 8.
filing system, which provides judicial access to any case files online anywhere. The “Via
Video” project provides courts the possibility of remote audition for faster and cost-effective
proceedings, and to guarantee the safety of minors and victims. A specific speech to text
program also assists the pursuit of the above goals, while the ruling support system collects
judicial decisions, lists e-files and public registers for judges with a single click.”
EXISTING PRACTICES IN THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM
 FRAMEWORK APPLIED

Sl Concept Application Intervention by AI

1. Theory of Constraint Treating judges as bottlenecks with Transferring non-
limited time and low efficiency at core activity to AI
present based system
2. Complete Kit Concept Cases will not be brought before a 1. AI can generate
judge unless all compliances are notices to parties
completed, and the court file is to complete the
complete in terms of all documents necessary step.
and evidences 2. Can issue
reminders and
seek excuses, if
any, before time.
3. Impose fines (In
legal terminology
– ‘costs’) for
missed deadlines
without prior
intimation.
4. AI can schedule
cases before the
judge once the file
is in order and not
before.

3. JIT/Lean Minimal human intervention can AI can enable it by

allow achieving higher efficiency replacing activities
from the system. Allowing the like record keeping,
system to do more with less staff. file retrieval, notice
generation, cost
collection and
checking
compliances
 TOOLWARE DESIGN

Toolware is a simple model developed in MS Excel to allow planning automation and hiring
of new judges. It treats the total time available per judge as the limited resource. Total
pending cases is the input at the beginning of every year.

For the purpose of the tool we have chosen certain processes, but the chosen ones don’t form
an exhaustive list. The tool allows a user to choose whether to automate a process or not. It
also allows a user to keep updating the toolware with data collected through surveys. The
data to be updated is regarding time spent by a judge on a particular process.

Tool then calculates the total time that can be saved due to automation and gives output in
number of judges required to dispose all cases pending at regional level. The user can further
check the impact of hiring a certain number of judges on the pendency of cases by entering
maximum judges which the user may hire.

Screenshot of The Toolware

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
REFERENCES