New Delhi, April 27 -- Prompted by mounting concern over delays that have kept thousands of eligible prisoners waiting for decisions on their premature release, the Supreme Court has pushed through a technology-led intervention that could fundamentally alter how remission applications are processed across the country. Acting on its directions, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has developed an "E-Prisons Early Release Processing Module", a digital system designed to automate and streamline the consideration of early release cases, in an exercise that will now begin as a pilot project in two jails in Uttar Pradesh. A bench of justices JK Maheshwari and Atul S Chandurkar directed the UP government to operationalise the pilot in Lucknow and Agra jails, even as it laid out a broader vision of eventually scaling the platform nationwide. The genesis of the module lies in what the court highlighted as a troubling administrative reality. While examining the status of remission applications in Uttar Pradesh, the bench was confronted with data revealing that a staggering number of cases were languishing at different levels of decision-making - some stuck at the district level, others awaiting scrutiny at headquarters, and many yet to even reach the competent authority. htc...