The Chartered Accountants Association, Surat (CAAS), submitted detailed suggestions on the Supreme Court’s draft “Regulations for Use of Artificial Intelligence in Courts, 2026,” while strongly endorsing the framework’s innovation-friendly approach. CAAS praised provisions promoting responsible AI adoption, prohibiting behavioural profiling and machine-decided outcomes, and preserving public ownership of judicial data. However, it recommended practical modifications to address implementation challenges at the filing level. The association sought representation of professional bodies on AI Committees, a materiality threshold for AI-use declarations to prevent registry objections, independent yet confidential audits of court AI systems, and a grievance mechanism covering all AI-related incidents. It also advocated vernacular accessibility, publication of draft annexures before finalisation, and time-bound approval processes for AI tools. CAAS emphasised that AI regulation should remain practical for litigants and practitioners while preserving human accountability, transparency, and access to justice across all judicial forums.
Chartered Accountants Association, Surat
Ref: CAAS/Representations/2026-27/04 | Dated: 11-06-2026
To,
The Member Secretary,
Artificial Intelligence Committee,
Supreme Court of India, New Delhi – 110 001.
By e-mail: office.regcc@sci.nic.in
Subject: Suggestions of the Chartered Accountants Association, Surat on the draft “Regulations for Use of Artificial Intelligence in Courts, 2026” – the view from the filing counter: those who appear, those who file, and those who pay for justice.
Hon’ble Sir/Madam,
I. INTRODUCTION
The Chartered Accountants Association, Surat (“CAAS”) is not a stranger knocking on the judiciary’s door. Its members appear daily as authorised representatives before the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, the Goods and Services Tax Appellate Tribunal and statutory Commissions – every one of which stands covered by Regulation 2 of the draft. When these Regulations commence, the declarations will be signed by our members, the verification discipline will be practised at our desks, and the consequences of every imperfect format will be borne by the taxpayers we represent. CAAS therefore writes not as a commentator but as a constituency.
CAAS is known in Gujarat for speaking plainly – to tax administrations, to boards, and on occasion to the highest offices of the executive – and for pairing every criticism with a worked-out solution. The same habit is brought to this consultation: candour in identifying gaps, and a concrete suggestion attached to each.
II. WHAT THE DRAFT GETS GLORIOUSLY RIGHT
Three features deserve to be said aloud. First, Regulations 16 and 17 – a presumption in favour of responsible Al adoption, and a chapter literally titled “Innovation over Restraint” – issued by the institution the world expects to be the most cautious. The judiciary has, in one draft, displayed more technological self-confidence than most administrative departments have managed in a decade; CAAS notes this with genuine admiration, and with the quiet hope that the example travels across the road to the executive. Second, the absolute prohibitions in Regulation 20 on risk scoring, behavioural profiling and machine-decided outcomes – a categorical refusal to repeat the mistakes other jurisdictions are still litigating. Third, Regulation 46, which ensures that tools built on the public’s judicial data remain the public’s property. These foundations should be retained word for word.
III. SUGGESTIONS – EACH WITH ITS SOLUTION ATTACHED
1. Give the filing counter a seat at the table:
The Al Committees under Regulation 33(2) consist of Hon’ble Judges and the Secretariat; Regulation 33(6) merely permits suggestions to be invited from universities and private undertakings. Yet the heaviest day-to-day load of these Regulations – the Annexure I declarations, the disclosure discipline, the grievance procedures – falls on practitioners: Advocates and the Chartered Accountants who appear as authorised representatives. CAAS suggests that recognised Bar associations and professional bodies whose members practise before Courts and Tribunals be given permanent invitee status on the Al Committees, and that the optional consultation in Regulation 33(6) become a mandatory annual exercise whose outcome is published in the Annual Transparency Report under Regulation 45. Rules worn daily are best stitched with the wearer present.
2. Do not Let the Al declaration become the registry’s newest objection:
Regulation 43(3) requires a declaration whenever Al assists the preparation of any document, pleading or evidence. But in 2026 there is hardly a pen left without a chip in it: word processors draft, search engines reason, grammar tools rewrite, translation is neural end to end. Read literally, every filing in India becomes “Al-assisted,” every cause requires a certificate, and a certificate that accompanies everything certifies nothing. Worse, the missing or “defective” declaration will become a fresh ground for registry objections – delay manufactured by the very instrument meant to abolish it. CAAS suggests a materiality threshold: disclosure where Al generated the substantive content of the filing, with an express exclusion for incidental assistance (grammar, formatting, search, transcription, translation) that the filer has verified. Regulation 43(6), which already makes the filer fully and personally answerable for Al-born falsehood with no machine alibi, is the real lock on this door; the declaration should be its label, not a second door.
3. On audits, hear the profession that Lives by audit:
Regulation 38(2) directs that all audits of Court Al systems be conducted “in-house,” with source code, algorithms and datasets never shared with any third party. CAAS speaks here from its own discipline: the first principle of auditing the principle our members sign their names under every day – is that no entity audits itself. Parliament does not permit a company’s accounts department to certify its own books; the same logic applies, with greater force, to systems that touch liberty and property. The confidentiality concern is legitimate, but it is answered by controlling the premises, not by abolishing the independent examiner. CAAS suggests: independent technical auditors empanelled by the Apex Body, security-cleared, bound by confidentiality, conducting the entire audit within Court premises on Court infrastructure – with the existing prohibition on any material leaving the building retained in full. The Court would then possess what every sound institution possesses: a second pair of eyes that does not report to the first.
4. A remedy for the Litigant wronged by a permitted tool:
Regulation 52 opens the grievance door only where harm flows from a prohibited use under Regulation 20. But the taxpayer’s likelier misfortune is far more ordinary: a transcription tool that mishears a deposition, a translation that inverts a finding, a defect-scrutiny algorithm that bounces a filing on the last day of limitation. For these – the probable injuries – the draft offers only Regulation 53’s pointer toward ordinary remedies, which for a small litigant means expense, distance and time. CAAS suggests extending Regulation 52 to harm arising from any Al Incident as defined in Regulation 3(e), with time-bound disposal and mandatory entry in the Al Incident Database. A regime this thorough about preventing harm should be equally swift about repairing it.
5. Carry the inclusivity promise down to the smallest Bench:
Regulation 13 promises that Al shall not widen the digital divide. CAAS’s members practise in industrial towns where the litigating public thinks, argues and signs in Gujarati, and where the Tribunal Bench is two districts away. The promise of Regulation 13 will be tested not at Tilak Marg but at such Benches. CAAS suggests that the training calendar under Regulation 51(2) and the litigant-facing tools under Regulation 19(1)(f) and (g) carry an explicit vernacular mandate – interfaces, chatbots and accessibility services in the language of the litigant – and that the Annual Transparency Report disclose adoption metrics Bench-wise, not merely Court-wise, so that the divide is measured where it actually lives.
6. Publish the Annexures before the ink dries:
The entire practical weight of the disclosure regime sits inside Annexure I and Annexure II – and neither accompanies the published draft. Stakeholders are commenting on a tollgate without having seen the toll. CAAS suggests the formats be published for a brief further window, and be designed as concise check-box declarations rather than essays in self-incrimination.
7. Put a clock on the corridor of approvals:
Between the Apex Body, five standing Committees, CoRE-Al, the Al Committees, the Secretariats and the Content Verification Authority, the draft erects a corridor every Al tool must walk before deployment – and nowhere in that corridor hangs a clock. Our members know from the tax statutes what Courts themselves have repeatedly insisted upon: that a power without a time-limit drifts toward the indefinite. If Regulation 17 means what it magnificently says, the approval machinery should be bound by the same discipline of time the judiciary daily expects of assessing officers. CAAS suggests a ninety-day outer limit for deciding any complete application for approval, reasons recorded for every extension, and pendency figures published in the Annual Transparency Report – so that “Innovation over Restraint” is measured in days, not in aspirations.
IV. CLOSING OBSERVATION THE COURT HAS EARNED
It is not every year that the judiciary out-innovates the executive. By publishing a framework that welcomes the machine while keeping the human signature on every order – open doors, with the lights on and the register maintained – the Hon’ble Supreme Court has set a benchmark that the administrative and tax machinery of this country would do well to study. CAAS is separately placing before the Government of India its suggestions for Al in tax administration and will be citing this draft as Exhibit A of institutional courage. The suggestions above are extended so that the benchmark, once final, is as practical at the filing counter as it is principled on the page.
CAAS extends its participation in any consultation, pilot or working group the Hon’ble Committee may constitute.
Regards,
For Chartered Accountants Association, Surat.
President | Secretary
