JOIN USCJI launches 'FASTER' to communicate SC's orders
Chief Justice of India N V Ramana on Thursday launched a digital platform, ‘Fast and Secured Transmission of Electronic Records’ (FASTER), to transmit court orders through a swift and secure electronic mode.
During the launch event, the Chief Justice said that FASTER came into existence, after a news report, published in July last year, regarding a delay in the release of prisoners. The top court had granted bail to prisoners. However, there was a delay of three days in reaching physical copies of the orders to the prison officials.
The FASTER is aimed to eliminate the situation where the release of prisoners gets delayed even after the top court grants them bail. He pointed out that the delay was solely due to jail authorities not getting the certified hard copies of the bail orders.
"The purpose of FASTER is, orders passed by the Supreme Court or any courts have to be transmitted safely without any interference," he said.
The Chief Justice said 73 nodal officers have been selected at the high court level to execute the software, and there are a total of 1,887 email ids of the nodal officers and other officers.
FASTER will send bail orders having digital signatures of the top court officers for authentication, and this information can only be accessed by officials operating the emails, ensuring privacy and security.
On July 16, 2021, the top court had said in an era of Information Technology boom, it appeared that jail authorities were relying “on ancient modes of communication through pigeons”.
A bench presided over by the Chief Justice took up a suo motu case and directions were issued to develop an electronic system -- for safe and faster delivery of orders.
The Chief Justice asked the then Secretary-General of the Supreme Court to consult amicus curiae and senior advocate Dushyant Dave and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to develop a secure direct electronic mode of communication from the top court to jails.
He had then said: “In this age of information and communication technology, we are still looking at the pigeons to communicate the orders”.
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