The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Registrar (Judicial) to arrange a demonstration of the E-Prison Portal on October 15.
A bench comprising Justice Abhay S. Oka and Justice Augustine George Masih was hearing a suo moto case (In Re Policy Strategy for Grant of Bail) where it had passed an order to ensure that prisoners who get bail are released without delay.
On November 29, 2022, the Apex Court ordered to include the issue of the e-prison module, which was subsequently extended across the country.
The two aspects of the e-prison model regard to first updating the e-prison portal with data related to Court Cases (across the country) in coordination with the Prison Authorities and second pertains to the preparation of the “Draft Information Sharing Protocol” by the National Information Centre (NIC).
The issue of the e-prison module came before the Supreme Court earlier but today the court was informed that the first aspect of e-prison portal was ready.
The E-Prison Portal, developed by the NIC, Delhi under the auspices of the Ministry of Home Affairs was ready to be launched.
E-prison is a prison management portal which has so far connected 1,318 prisons across the country.
It aggregates the entire records of inmates from the time they are admitted to the Prison and till their release.
The portal intends to record the entire prison cycle of the prisoners.
The bench wondered what the nature of the portal is and how the data is collected by the portal.
The Court suggested that not all facets of the information on the portal should be accessible to the general public.
Advocate Devansh A. Mohta, who was appointed amicus curiae in this case, told the Court that the data is fed into the portal as soon as a person is admitted to the prison.
The details include personal details, case details, medical details and all other complete information required on prisoners.
He added that the only persons authorised to upload the data on the portal are members of the Prison Department.
Although Mohta tried explaining to the Court what the portal looks like with the help of concept note, the Court insisted to see the Demo of the E-Prison. ” Unless we see what exactly is there on the portal and how it works we won’t be able to appreciate it, ” the bench said.
The Court suggested that a demonstration of the portal would be a better option to understand the holistic working of the portal including the contents uploaded.
Devansh A. Mohta then fixed the viewing of the E-Prison Portal in the Courtroom on October 15 at 4:15 pm.
