New Delhi, April 15 -- During a glittering function on November 16, 2025, the 24x7 ON Court was one of the proud winners of the Nexus of Good Awards 2025. The jury for the awards was headed by the former Chairman, Union Public Service Commission, Mr Deepak Gupta. The award was given away by the former Cabinet Secretary, Government of India, Mr B K Chaturvedi. This initiative has redefined what scalable judicial transformation can look like in India. The initiative germinated in late 2024. The trigger was the sheer audacity of its vision through a newspaper article on its launch. The headline from Kerala, "India's First Digitally Native Court Goes Live in Kollam", caught the attention. The piece described a revolutionary pilot for cheque bounce cases-no physical visits, no paper trails, justice reimagined end-to-end. A complainant in Kollam can file on his computer on his own: mandatory fields enforced rules, limitation periods flagged with auto-condonation prompts, templates generated instantly. Scrutiny wrapped up remotely in hours; payments cleared via e-Treasury; summons issued through police and courier integrations. The judge's dashboard offered a summarised history, pre-drafted orders, and bulk digital signing. Trial phases that once took 350 days? Now 48. How efficient, predictable, and profoundly human this was!

More details were sought immediately online and in follow-up reports. The ON Court wasn't an accident. It emerged from a rigorous two-year diagnosis involving field visits to five district courts, over 90 stakeholder interviews-including judges, advocates, litigants, and police-and analysis of 50+ metrics from NJDG, e-Courts, and NITI Aayog's NDAP. Cheque dishonour cases, forming 11 per cent of India's criminal pendency, were strangling the system. Litigants were spending crores in travel and delays; advocates were buried in duplicate filings; judges were drowning in administrative churn.

The team led by the High Court of Kerala, in partnership with PUCAR collective (a public mission dedicated to transforming dispute resolution, including Samgara Governance, Agami, XKDR, and E-Governments foundation), didn't settle for incremental fixes. They built a Theory of Change anchored on four pillars: Efficiency, Predictability, Seamlessness, and Openness. The goal? Operationalise one citizen-centric pilot in Kollam and create a replicable blueprint.

And they delivered.

By November 2024, the 24x7 ON Court went live. Powered by DRISTI, a modular, open-source Digital Public Infrastructure, it broke court functions into reusable services-filing, scrutiny, scheduling, signing-configurable for any case type. Unlike monolithic systems, DRISTI allowed local innovation without fragmentation. Policy tweaks enabled digital-first workflows. Physical courtrooms were redesigned with litigant lounges and Nyay Mitra helpdesks. Staff were retrained; advocates were brought on board through training and testing of the platform with them.

The results speak louder than any vision document.

* Filing to registration: 3 days (down from 10).

* Registration to cognisance: 23 days (down from 150).

* Summons and warrants: 52 days (down from 300).

* Trial duration: 48 days (down from 350).

* Average time to first judgment: 223 days-against a national average of 600.

Hearings now occur every 19 days with 98 per cent adherence, and substantive hearings have risen from 19 per cent to 25 per cent. Scrutiny? Completed within 24 hours in 95 per cent of cases.

Behind these numbers are changed lives. A small trader from the district no longer loses wages travelling to court. An advocate corrects defects remotely instead of queuing at e-sewa kendras. A judge in Kollam focuses on adjudication, not paperwork.

An independent evaluation by NyayNeethi Policy Collective confirms the shift: 94 per cent of advocates are satisfied; 70 per cent of litigants believe their cases will resolve faster. SMS alerts, digital case lists, and voice-to-text transcription (in English and Malayalam) have become trusted companions in the justice journey.

This is not just a Kerala story. It is a national blueprint.

The ON Court exposes the fragility of old assumptions. Why should justice require physical presence? Why can't processes be asynchronous? Why shouldn't ecosystems-police, treasury, couriers-talk to each other seamlessly? It reveals policy gaps: rigid filing formats, manual payment norms, and absent data uniformity. And it offers solutions-model rules, interoperability standards, and modular technology.

At its core, the ON Court embodies the Nexus of Good philosophy: identify what works, understand how it works, replicate it, and scale it through public-private partnership.

The judiciary brings authority and reach. Innovators like PUCAR bring agility and user-centric design. Technology firms contribute modular platforms. Advocates and litigants co-create through feedback. The state provides infrastructure and policy backing. Together, they've built something greater than the sum of its parts.

This is not the end. It is the beginning.

With playbooks, open-source code, and capacity built within the Kerala High Court IT team, ON Court is ready for replication. Other High Courts are watching. Chhattisgarh has expressed interest in MACT pilots. Tamil Nadu is exploring asynchronous workflows. The movement is gathering pace.

There is no shortage of pendency in India-5 crore cases and counting. But there is also no shortage of possibilities. The 24x7 ON Court proves that when intent meets rigorous diagnosis, bold design, and relentless implementation, transformation is not just possible-it is inevitable.

The need now is to commit to becoming facilitators-of replication, of scaling, of systemic change. The need is to build nexuses between courts and citizens, between tradition and technology, between justice delayed and justice delivered. The model that has been put in place can be a game-changer. It presents a wonderful example of Nexus of Good. The model can be replicated through a public-private partnership in the true spirit of Nexus of Good.

The best lack conviction, wrote Yeats, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. The 24x7 ON Court reminds us that the good, when organised, can outshine the noise. It is time to amplify it.

Views expressed are personal. The writer is an author and a former civil servant

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.