SUVAS — Supreme Court of India's AI translation tool for regional-language access to justice

The Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software (SUVAS) was launched in November 2019 by the Chief Justice of India with technical support from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. It uses machine-assisted AI to translate Supreme Court judgments, orders and rulings from English into eleven official regional languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of India's Constitution. India has 22 scheduled official languages and a literacy-in-English rate of around 10%, yet all Supreme Court proceedings and published judgments are in English.

Expand access to Supreme Court judgments for citizens who cannot read English, without requiring them to commission costly private translations.

Translated judgments are published through the e-SCR (e-Supreme Court Reports) portal. A dedicated monitoring committee headed by a serving Supreme Court judge oversees translation progress and coordinates with sub-committees of High Court judges to extend the service. The Bar Council of India is developing a Common Core Vocabulary to standardise legal terminology across regional languages. All translated documents carry a disclaimer that the Supreme Court Registry bears no responsibility for inaccuracies.

Translation volume grew from 2,238 judgments in January 2023 to over 31,000 by end-2023. By August 2024, 36,271 Supreme Court judgments were published in Hindi and 17,142 in 16 other regional languages. Landmark rulings, including the Kesavananda Bharati verdict establishing the Constitution's basic-structure doctrine, are now available in ten languages.

The Ministry of Law and Justice confirmed the deployment in the Rajya Sabha in December 2023. The documented growth shows clear expansion of legal access, though no independent accuracy benchmarking or citizen-impact valuation has been published, and the standing disclaimer on translation accuracy reflects an honest acknowledgement of current AI limitations.