What is NJRS?
The National Judicial Reference System (NJRS) project is one of the key measures being taken up by the Central Board of Direct Taxes to streamline the litigation management system in the Income Tax Department (ITD). NJRS is envisaged to be a comprehensive electronic database of all appeals and judgments in Direct Tax cases pending before various judicial authorities i.e. Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), High Courts and the Supreme Court of India. It will also bring automation in the working of the Judicial wings of the department. NJRS has the facility to help in tracking of appeals in ITAT, High Courts and the Supreme Court, and issuing alerts and reminders in case of delays in filing appeals.
NJRS is also a knowledge repository that will enable the Assessing Officers to be consistent in framing assessment orders due to easy accessibility of judicial information, case laws and judgments. Thus, NJRS will help in improving the quality of work output. It will assist the Departmental Representatives/Counsels in improving the quality of representation before Tribunals & Courts and enhancing the success rate of the department in appeals.
NJRS is thus envisaged as a tool for effective tracking and monitoring of Appeals at various stages, reduce litigation & disputed tax demand by bunching & targeting high demand cases, a comprehensive reference system and a decision support system to achieve efficiency in the tax litigation processes of the Income Tax Department, Government of India. It is accessible to all officers of ITD over the internet.
A consortium comprising of M/s NSDL e-Governance Infrastructure Ltd. and M/s Skorydov Systems Pvt. Ltd. is the Implementation Agency (IA) for the NJRS project.

Which courts/authorities are being covered in NJRS?
The following courts are covered under NJRS:
Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) (All 27 cities)
All High Courts
Supreme Court of India &
Authority for Advance Ruling (AAR)
(Please note that appeals filed with Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals) are not covered in NJRS)

Litigations under which Acts are covered in NJRS?
All appeals/ judgments under the following Acts are covered under NJRS:
Income Tax Act, 1961
Wealth Tax Act, 1957
Expenditure Tax Act, 1987
Interest Tax Act, 1974 and
Gift Tax Act, 1958

What are the components of NJRS?
There are conceptually two components of NJRS for appeals and judgments that are accessible through a unified interface of the NJRS portal:

Appeal Repository Management System (ARMS) - an electronic database of all pending appeals at Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), High Courts (HCs) and the Supreme Court of India (SC)

Judicial Research & Reference System (JRRS) - an electronic database of all orders/judgments of ITAT, Authority of Advance Ruling, HCs and SC

What are the features of NJRS?
Homepage for displaying a consolidated position of litigation in the department and important judgments flagged by users

Dashboard for display of jurisdiction specific information about cases in various courts. Alerts for users about new messages received from other users. Calendar for display of cases fixed in the various courts on any particular date

Provision to search appeals and judgments database with enhanced search facility based on key metadata elements. Facility for filtering of search results based on keywords/catchphrases, AY, Section/Sub-section, etc. Functionality to save searches

Facility to view scanned appeal documents and the related appeal data (metadata) such as key phrases, sections involved etc

Workflows for officers of the department engaged in litigation related activities

Facility to research and prepare case notes. The NJRS will support the research by displaying related appeals and judgments

Facility to enter and maintain a case diary for day to day case proceedings. Functionality to identify related cases for bunching of appeals by officers engaged in litigation work at the ITAT, High Courts and the Supreme Court

Facility to mark appeals for priority attention

Facility to send messages between various users (primarily between officers engaged in litigation work and those engaged in assessment work)

Facility for data analysis and generation of reports based on data contained within the ARMS and JRRS

Facility for users to upload articles on litigation issues and a library of Acts, Circulars, notifications and other publications for reference

Please note that some of the functionalities are not available in the beta release.

How is the data sourced for the NJRS project?
The project aims to obtain data directly from courts’ computer systems, subject to requisite approval from the courts. So far the following courts have agreed to provide data from their computer systems for the NJRS project – ITAT (all 27 cities), Supreme Court of India, High Courts of Punjab & Haryana, Gujarat, AP & Telangana, Karnataka, Guwahati, Sikkim, Madhya Pradesh and Kolkata.

In addition to the data received from the courts, a Central Data Processing Centre (CDPC) has been established at Nashik to pick up more metadata from the appeal documents scanned at the various Regional Scanning Centres (RSCs). These RSCs have been setup at the 27 ITAT locations in the country and also at the Directorate General of Legal & Research, ITD.

Some data is also to be sourced from other computer systems of the department. For example, the jurisdiction over a particular appeal is determined based on the PAN number available in the appeal documents and by determining the concerned AO from the PAN database of the department. The post and employee data is provided by the HRMS system of the department. The Acts and Circulars are to be provided by the DIT(System)-III from the  www.incometaxindia.gov.in   website database.

M/s Skorydov Systems Pvt. Ltd. is responsible for providing the judgment related data.

Who has access to NJRS?
NJRS has been designed mainly for use by the ITD officers. Taxpayers have been provided limited access to NJRS to view their own cases. (The taxpayer access is not available in the beta release.)

What is the current stage of the NJRS Project?
NJRS project is currently in advanced stage of development. Initially a soft launch of the portal (Beta version) with limited functionality has been made available at  https://www.njrs-itd.gov.in

The portal is expected to Go-Live with full functionalities by 31st March, 2015

What does Beta version mean for the Users?
Access to Beta version of the NJRS portal is limited to the users of the ITD only. The functionality is limited to search within the data available in the NJRS repository in the beta version. The repository will be expanded and enriched on a regular basis with data being imported for more appeals and judgments. The complete set of functionalities as envisaged will be available once the NJRS project achieves ‘Go-Live’ status.

It may be noted that the software quality audit is yet to be completed by STQC and hence there may be some bugs/issues in the beta version. Users are encouraged to report any issues noticed to the Helpdesk

How much data is available in NJRS at the time of soft launch?
Users can expect to search within a judgment database comprising about 50,000 judgments at soft launch. Users can also expect to access the appeals in Supreme Court, AP & Telangana HC and the Hyderabad ITAT, initially. The NJRS repository will be updated with data for appeals pertaining to other jurisdictions on a continuous basis.

Access for ITD Users

How can a user access NJRS application?
A user can access NJRS application by using his employee ID as the User ID. The password will be provided by NJRS.
The process of obtaining NJRS login password is as follows:
1. ITD users to send their employee ID by email to njrs-user@nsdl.co.in. The email must be sent from their official email ID ending with “@incometax.gov.in”. The subject line of the email should be ‘Register’
2. The first time password will be communicated to the Users’ official email ID from where the request was initiated.

What is the User id?
The employee code (provided by ITD) of the User has to be used as a User ID for login to NJRS.

What happens if I hold multiple charge(s) as a departmental officer?
NJRS has a role-based access control system for users. The officer will login to the system using their User ID and password as usual. In case an officer is holding multiple charges, the system will prompt the officer to select one of the charges. The access to underlying data will be covered accordingly. On completion of work related to the selected charge, the officer is required to logout and login again to perform duties related to their other charge(s).

How can a user reset the password?
Users can initiate a request for reset of password as follows:
1. ITD users to email (from their official email ID) their Employee ID to NJRS email ID njrs-user@nsdl.co.in
2. The subject line of the email should be ‘Reset’
3. On receipt of email, a new password will be communicated to the Users’ official email ID from where the request was initiated

Taxpayer access

Do taxpayers have access to NJRS?
NJRS has been designed mainly for use by the ITD users. Taxpayers have been provided limited access to the extent of viewing the status of their appeals only. (This facility is not available in the beta release.)

How will taxpayers have access to NJRS?
Taxpayers do not require a user ID on NJRS. They will be able to view the status of their appeal, next hearing date and the judgment text by providing details of the PAN.

Help Desk& Research Support

What is the scope of Help Desk support?
The Help Desk will help NJRS users in resolution of technical problems and requests pertaining to the access of NJRS application

What are the Help Desk timings?
The Helpdesk operates from 9:30 AM to 6 PM on all working days of ITD

What is NJRS Judicial Research Team?
A Judicial Research Team (JRT) consisting of experienced resources will help NJRS Users in preparing custom reports based on the information available in NJRS. This is an email based research support to be made available from Go-live.

How is Help Desk different from JRT?
The JRT would provide help to NJRS Users in litigation management by generating reports. However, the Help desk will help Users in resolving technical issues pertaining to the access to NJRS application.