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Pendency, court reform and tribunals

The work of the courts: the backlog, reforms to clear it, the tribunals set up beside the courts and the questions of their independence.

Showing 1 of 3 articles, those that changed from 1 to 30 June 2026.Show all

AI in courts: the draft 2026 Regulations

Prelims and Mains

The draft Regulations for Use of Artificial Intelligence in Courts, 2026, prepared by the Supreme Court's AI Committee, are a 57 regulation framework for every court and tribunal in India.

Regulation 4 makes AI strictly assistive and subservient to human judgement.
Regulation 20 lists prohibited uses as absolute and non derogable, including risk scoring for flight risk, recidivism, bail eligibility or witness credibility; Regulation 56 bars the Apex Body from relaxing it.
Permitted uses include transcription, translation, legal research, scheduling, accessibility services and chatbots.
The ban traces to the Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS), a US recidivism tool found to misclassify Black defendants, and SyRI, a Dutch welfare risk scoring system struck down in 2020 on privacy grounds.

Oversight chain

Supreme Court Apex Body
Sets the framework and may not relax the prohibited uses
High Court AI Secretariats
Keep the AI Register and Incident Database, run audits and publish transparency reports
High Court AI Committees
Hear grievances from litigants about AI use in their cases

Oversight runs down from the Supreme Court to every High Court, and a litigant's complaint runs up through the same chain.Source: Frontline, 16 June 2026

What changed

16 Jun 2026New
- The draft was released on 3 June; about 52 million cases were pending across the judiciary as of mid 2026.
Mains: The bans are strong on paper but the oversight machinery is unfunded and beyond the capacity of district courts, and a High Court AI Secretariat must judge vendors' own descriptions of their tools, so a risk tool could be rebranded as a scheduling aid.
Frontline, 16 Jun 2026: A firewall against algorithmic justice (opens in a new tab)

Show history (1 other update)

2 Jul 2026newly added
- In Pooja Ramesh Singh v. Jammu and Kashmir Bank Ltd (2 July 2026), the Supreme Court set aside orders of the National Company Law Tribunal and its appellate tribunal that relied on non existent precedents generated by artificial intelligence.
- It held that an order built on such hallucinated material is no decision in law, and that adjudication must stay under human control at every stage.
- It directed the Bar Council of India to set up a committee to frame principles and disciplinary norms on the use of artificial intelligence.
The Hindu, 2 Jul 2026: Supreme Court says AI-generated hallucinated precedents 'catastrophic' to judicial process, sets aside NCLT order (opens in a new tab) · LiveLaw, 2 Jul 2026: Supreme Court sets aside NCLT judgment for using AI hallucinated citations, asks BCI to examine issue (opens in a new tab)

Also filed elsewhere

Foreigners Tribunals and due process · on Citizenship
Foreigners Tribunals are quasi judicial bodies, mostly in Assam, that decide whether a person referred to them is a foreigner.
Insolvency Code and the money laundering law · on Competition, insolvency and ease of business
The moratorium under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 halts claims against a company in insolvency, while the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 lets the Enforcement Directorate attach proceeds of crime.