At Goa conclave, experts suggest digitisation of legal records, legislation to ensure data privacy

A legislation to ensure data privacy, digitisation of legal records and higher budgetary allotment for the judicial sector are some of the recommendations made by academicians and legal experts to improve the state of the law in the country.

Several experts discussed issues like excessive delay in the delivery of justice, high costs of litigation, the dearth of qualified lawyers and vacancy of judges in courts at all levels during the just-concluded fifth edition of Difficult Dialogues, an annual forum examining issues of contemporary relevance in South Asia, here.

A panel on "Accountability vs independence of judiciary: Is the balance right?' noted that the present collegium system of appointing judges in India needs to be relooked and proposals from various sections of society should be considered to work out an improved framework.

It proposed a framework that does a detailed analysis of a judge's performance to work out various stages and points in between where corrective checks ..