Update

MeitY designated six new laboratories as authorised Examiners of Electronic Evidence under Section 79A of the IT Act, 2000. The notification is dated 9 July 2026 and was published in the Gazette of India on 13 July 2026. Some press coverage reported this development in late August 2026, roughly six weeks after the actual notification date; MediaNama's own report on the designations acknowledged covering the story later than the notification itself. Five of the six newly designated laboratories handle computer and mobile device forensics. The sixth is the Border Security Force's Central Drone Forensic Lab in Delhi, designated specifically for drone-related evidence, described as the first such designation of its kind in India.

The designations respond to a shortage of notified examiners relative to the volume of digital evidence moving through Indian courts. Under Section 63 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, which replaced the Indian Evidence Act's Section 65B framework in 2024, electronic evidence generally requires a two-part certificate: Part A disclosing the record's hash value, and Part B containing expert certification. The Madras High Court had taken the position that only a government-notified Section 79A Examiner could sign Part B.

In May 2026, in Pune Bar Association v. Union of India, a three-judge Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi, and Justice Vipul M. Pancholi upheld the constitutionality of Section 63(4)'s certification requirements while disagreeing with the Madras High Court's narrower reading. The Court held, reading Sections 39(1) and 39(2) of the BSA together, that any person with special skill and expertise in computer science and cyber forensics may sign Part B as an expert, not only examiners formally notified under Section 79A, subject to the court's satisfaction in each case.

Analysis

The addition of six laboratories addresses part of a capacity shortfall that predates this notification, but the scale of the response is modest relative to the volume of digital evidence generated across India's courts, and MeitY has not indicated a timeline for further expansions of the notified examiner list.

The Supreme Court's May 2026 ruling in Pune Bar Association reduces the practical significance of that shortfall somewhat, since litigants unable to access a government-notified examiner now have a judicially sanctioned alternative in a suitably qualified private expert, subject to the court's own assessment. Legal commentary on the ruling has noted that while it clarified who may sign Part B, it left open some questions about how courts should assess a private expert's qualifications in individual cases, since the judgment did not lay down a detailed test for that determination.

The designation of a dedicated drone forensics examiner, housed within a paramilitary force rather than a civilian forensic laboratory, reflects an anticipated rise in litigation and criminal cases involving drone-related evidence, including smuggling and border security matters. Whether this examiner will be readily accessible for private commercial or civil disputes involving drone evidence, as opposed to law-enforcement and security matters, has not been addressed by MeitY.

India's model, in which a defined, government-notified list of examiners carries enhanced evidentiary weight, differs from the approach in the United States, where the Federal Rules of Evidence 902(13) and 902(14), in force since 2017, allow self-authentication of electronic evidence through certification by any qualified person, without requiring inclusion on a government-approved list. The American approach relies more heavily on adversarial challenge at trial to test the reliability of a given certification, while the Indian approach, even after the Supreme Court's clarification in Pune Bar Association, continues to give a formally notified examiner's certification a distinct evidentiary status.