Subject matter of writ cases

High Court Writ Dashboard

Writ Petitions (including Public Interest Litigation) have captured public imagination and are a kind of court case which doesn’t deal with general law and order or civil disputes between private parties. Any time that a citizen’s rights (including fundamental rights) are violated, Article 226 of the Constitution of India empowers them to approach the relevant High Court for restoration of the right in question. The aggrieved party petitions the court to issue formal, ‘written’ orders or directions to a specific government authority for relief. Such cases help reveal how citizens interact with the judiciary as an independent pillar of the state and place their faith in courts to take action against executive overreach, impropriety or lack of action. In this Dashboard, the first tab explores data as reported by High Courts to the Supreme Court. This tab provides wider context on the scope of writ cases within the judicial system. The next three tabs use the DAKSH writ dataset to further explore subject matter, time taken and case outcomes. The complete raw dataset may be accessed under the Resources tab

As part of the DAKSH commitment to share public data from High Courts in accessible and easy to analyse formats, we’ve created a sample dataset of writ cases. This dataset is drawn from eCourts and will allow interested parties to understand the nuances associated with the writ case life-cycle. The *new and improved* DAKSH High Court Writ portal includes a platform to visualise eCourts data. It also contains open datasets that may be downloaded for further research.

The actual data visualisation platform will enable both deeper qualitative understanding on the subject matter of Writs i.e. what kinds of Acts they are filed under, how cases are classified by courts and outcomes of cases as well as quantitative explorations of how long most writs remain in the system in terms of calendar days and hearings taken for disposal.