THE DAKSH Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Law & Technology at IIT Delhi is the first of its kind facility set up in India to rigorously explore the intersectionality of law and technology, and build solutions to different challenges of our justice delivery system harnessing interdisciplinary research.

The CoE was set up in October 2020 with a vision to:

Conduct research on problems of the law and justice system, and create new knowledge, by using methods, tools, and techniques from various disciplines;
Build models and tools for application in the law and justice system; and
Build a community of practice that will bring together members of the judiciary, civil servants, legal practitioners, researchersacross disciplines, and industry.
The CoE has already launched four projects, and more are in the pipeline. It aims to establish the Indian law and justice system as an exemplary one globally. Apart from conducting independent research, the CoE envisions serving the Law and Justice sector of the country by identifying the areas that are relevant and have a significant impact on the performance of this sector on the ground.

Explaining its objective, Professor Nomesh Bolia, the Co-ordinator of CoE, Law & Technology, IIT Delhi says, “The CoE’s research and outreach aims to build and nurture a community of practice that is committed to tackling key problems in the law and justice system of the nation through rigorous, data-based research. The CoE stands for a collaborative as opposed to a confrontational approach, respecting the constraints and sensitivities of all institutional stakeholders.”

Also read: IIT Delhi Project to Use Math Models to Improve Indian Justice System

A brief of launched projects by the CoE over the past year are provided herein.

Court and case management using simulation modelling

Indian courts produce massive amounts of data. Indian courts also suffer from pendency issues. Most of the data produced by Indian courts also remains to be digitised in a manner that renders them useful for applying data analytics and machine learning techniques. An important aspect of Indian courts that technology may seek to address in the short term is that of caseflow management (CFM).