India's Judgement access problem : Why private commercial reporters still beat Supreme Court Online...

In 2025, a nation boasting digital public goods like Aadhaar and UPI is still shackled by a colonial relic:  Private / Commercial law reporters get judgements faster than litigants themselves. All India Reporter and SCC are not villains in this story; they're simply exploiting inefficiencies baked into the judicial bloodstream. The real scandal is that the State tolerates a system where access to law, the very foundation of rights, is rationed through backdoors and paywalls.

How does it work ? Court correspondents and accredited reporters hover in courtrooms, collecting draft judgments or copies from court staff before the official machinery bothers to upload them. Parties to the case, ordinary citizens, wait days or weeks for certified copies. Why? Because understaffed registries shuffle paper bundles, clerks vanish on leave, and digitization crawls along like a colonial scribe with ink and quill.

This isn't a scam in the traditional sense. Bribes aren't the engine here. What drives the imbalance is inertia and tradition. The Supreme Court still publishes its own official Supreme Court Reports, but they arrive at a pace that would embarrass a telegram office. High Courts cling to the Indian Law Reports Act, 1875 – yes, an Act from Queen Victoria's time. Meanwhile, SCC Online and AIR monetize immediacy, turning public documents into private currency. The poor litigant pays in time, the rich lawyer pays in subscription. Justice remains unequal.

Why does this matter ?

Article 14 promises equality before law. Article 21 guarantees speedy justice. But when judgments are locked behind subscription walls or clerical red tape, both principles are mocked.

The irony deepens when seen against enforcement failures. Take the latest case where a Nigerian national, accused in a cyber fraud, jumped bail and fled the country. The Supreme Court urged the Union to frame a policy so foreign accused don't abscond. But such policies will fail unless the very judgments and bail orders are uploaded at lightning speed. Passport authorities, airport security, and immigration desks need real-time integration with eCourts and Supreme Court apps to flag offenders instantly. Without timely uploads by court masters, lookout circulars are delayed and fugitives vanish on the next flight out.

And here's the paradox: the Supreme Court and a few High Courts now live-stream proceedings. Citizens can watch arguments and even hear orders being pronounced in real time. Yet those same citizens, and the enforcement agencies tasked with protecting them, must still chase clerks, pay fees, or depend on private reporters to access the written text of what was just spoken live.

 The Path Forward... 

The fix is obvious. Mandate real-time uploads the moment a judgment is pronounced and signed. Create a centralized judicial reporting authority. Force integration between private law reporters and official servers. Connect airports, railways, and passport offices with eCourt systems for instant offender alerts. Above all, treat judgments not as tradeable commodities but as public goods.

Additionally, several measures can strengthen this reform:

Technology Solutions: Implement automated judgment processing systems using AI-assisted transcription and formatting tools. Courts already record proceedings digitally – converting these to searchable, downloadable judgments should be seamless.

Accountability Mechanisms: Introduce service level agreements for judgment uploads with clear timelines. Registry officials should face performance evaluations based on digital delivery metrics, not just case disposal numbers.

Public-Private Partnerships: Rather than competing with private publishers, the judiciary should mandate data-sharing agreements. Private reporters can continue adding value through analysis and commentary, but raw judgments must be simultaneously available on official platforms.

International Best Practices: Countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia provide free, immediate access to court judgments through government websites. India's digital infrastructure is robust enough to match, if not exceed, these standards.

Legal Framework Updates:  The Indian Law Reports Act, 1875 needs comprehensive revision. Modern legislation should mandate digital-first reporting with physical copies as secondary options, not the reverse.

The colonial hangover of law reporting has lingered too long. The courts cannot allow tradition to masquerade as efficiency while the public, and the State's own enforcement machinery, remain second in line to private publishers. Access to judgments is not a lawyer's privilege. It is every citizen's right, and a sovereign necessity.

Adv. Mangesh Dhumal.