Sakina Tashrifwala
Published on: 19 September 2022 at 19:25 IST
On the occasion of the Ninth Convocation of NLUO last Saturday, Justice Uday Umesh Lalit, the Chief Justice of India, Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and M.R. Shah, Judges of the Supreme Court of India, and Dr. Justice S. Muralidhar, Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court and Chancellor, unveiled a dataset titled “KHOJ” (Know Your High Court Judges).
The dataset, the first of its kind in India, includes 43 attributes that describe the personal, academic, and professional backgrounds of 1,708 High Court Judges appointed between October 6, 1993 (the date the collegium was established) and May 31, 2021. It comprises 27 files with information from the Judges on a variety of topics.
The following are the main factors used as the foundation for data collection:
Background Information: There are seven variables centred around their names, place of birth, date of birth, gender, etc.
Education-related information: There are 10 variables through which the dataset has captured their educational background, ranging from schooling, university, and higher education. Though it attempted to capture all the publicly available information, this section is not exhaustive and there may be data points that are not available in the public domain.
Experience before Judicial Appointments: There are 10 variables capturing the professional experience of judges, including litigation and administrative experience, if they were empanelled by PSUs, banks, statutory bodies, or private companies.
Judicial Appointment(s) Information: There are 13 variables centred on their appointments, transfers from High Courts, appointments to the Supreme Court, and so on.
NLUO’s Dean of Academics, Prof. (Dr.) Rangin Pallav Tripathy, stated when introducing the dataset:
“This dataset opens pathways for researchers who are looking to probe deeper or wider into the composition of the High Courts and those who want to undertake jurimetrics studies which explore linkages between judicial behaviour and the background of judges.”
Over 30 students and 10 experts contributed their time and effort over the course of 15 months to create the dataset. The Civic Data Lab, Agami, and the Centre for Public Policy, Law, and Good Governance at NLUO worked together on this.
It all began with the “Summer of Data 2021” programme, where students from throughout the nation used official and widely available data sources to become the original data makers.
Prof. Tripathy further declared that the dataset is now openly and completely free to use on the “Justice Hub” platform.