All Supreme Court Judgments to Have Neutral Citations, Announces CJI DY Chandrachud

Chief Justice of India Dr. DY Chandrachud today announced in open court that all Judgments of the Supreme Court will now have neutral citations.

The Court will have neutral citations for all 30,000 judgments delivered by it.

“We have launched neutral citations for all judgments of the Supreme Court. So all 30,000 judgements are going to have neutral citation. From 1st Jan 2023 all judgements, then we'll go prior to 2023, till 2014 and then from 1950 to 2014,” said the CJI.

“e-SCR is as good as SCC, now”, added Solicitor General Tushar Mehta.

The CJI said that machine learning and Artificial Intelligence is being used to translate the judgments of the Court to other languages.

“We are also translating all Supreme Court judgments into Indian languages. We already have close to 2900 judgments already translated into Hindi and all the other languages and not just Hindi”, the CJI said.

CJI DY Chandrachud also said that the translation is being verified by the team of (retired) District Judges.

“I have requested Justice Abhay Oak to chair the e-committee (for translation). We are asking every High Court to set up a team of District Judges and law researchers, who will verify physically- to make sure that machine translation is correct”, he said further.

The CJI also elaborated on why such verification would be necessary.

Citing an example, he said “There could be a few glitches, for instance we say ‘Leave Granted’, when we dictate a judgment. If you actually translate it in Hindi, it could be ‘Avkash prapt ho gaya’ (holiday granted).”

A Neutral Citation is a unique reference given to each Judgment rendered by a Court. The availability of a unique, permanent Neutral Citation format for Judicial decisions would be easy for making references for various purposes and it would be accessible and searchable on this parameter on public domain as and when uploaded from the Court

As an initiative by the e-committee of the Supreme Court, all High Courts across the country will also adopt the practice of having neutral citations. The Delhi and Kerala High Courts have already introduced their own 'neutral citation system' for all judgments uploaded on their official websites.