Income Tax - 'National judicial Reference System (NJRS)'
AN important aspect of every tax administration is the management of tax litigation. In order to achieve efficiency in direct tax litigation there is a need to create a centralized, indexed and searchable repository, where details of the appeals and the information pertaining to the orders/judgments passed in the appeals are accessible to all officers of the department. The database should also contain the PAN so that the entire litigation history of a tax payer is available at the press of a button. The repository should have suitable metadata; it needs to be cross referenced and must have intelligent search capabilities to enable identification of issues for decision making.
With the above goals, the Income Tax department has decided to create a 'National judicial Reference System (NJRS)'.
The NJRS would primarily comprise two components:.
Appeals repository and Management System: A repository of pending appeals together with a status tracking system. This repository is proposed to be created by integration of the relevant data from the IT systems already established at ITAT, High Court and Supreme Court and the IT applications running in the Income Tax Department. At present the data available in the IT systems of the various courts does not contain detailed metadata such as the issues in appeal. Therefore it is proposed to supplement the basic data available from court registries with information culled out from paper copies of the appeal documents available with the Income Tax department as a party in any of these appeals. In addition, the data will be enriched by cross referencing of various items, creating metadata and keywords. An MIS will be developed on the database for status tracking, reporting and analysis, online dashboard, and alert capabilities. It will also have work flows for judicial officers of the department.
Judicial Research and Reference System: A repository of the decisions of the courts in decided cases as a single, indexed, searchable, cross-linked database of orders/Judgments (of ITATs, High Courts & the Supreme Court). It will also have the relevant statutory enactments, circulars etc. This repository is proposed to be created by using the orders/judgments already available in digital format in the IT systems of the various courts. The basis textual data is proposed to be enriched by creating metadata and head notes in all important cases. The project will provide all final orders/judgments from 1/4/2009 for HCs & SC and from 1/4/2012 for the ITAT, as well as all important prior judgments.
This project has been awarded to a consortium led by NSDL e-governance Infrastructure Ltd. The Implementation Agency (IA) is responsible for the design, development, implementation and the O&M of the system for a period of 5 years. The department also has certain specific responsibilities under the contract besides its role as a facilitator for project implementation.