NEW DELHI: It’s a wise cause-driven judgment. The Delhi High Court is all set to go paperless in a bid to save the environment. In a new initiative, the Court has decided to drop the practice of the printing of daily cause list meant for supply to the lawyers. Through this innovative environmental drive, the Court will save trees—1320 a month and 15,000 in a year.
In her bid to go green, Chief Justice of Delhi High Court G Rohini, in consultation with the Technical Committee has directed that the printing of case lists won’t be undertaken with immediate effect and has requested the lawyers to submit their email ids for receiving e-mails on regular basis. The court has also written to the Delhi High Court Bar Association, asking it to update the email addresses for a smooth functioning of the new system.
On an average, a cause list has 125 pages with 1200 copies. Approximately 1,50,000 pages would be saved by this initiative. High Court works for 22 days in a month and with this step nearly 33 lakh pages can be saved in a month’s time.
This is not the first initiative by the Delhi High Court to save the environment. The court has stepped up a precedent for the entire country by setting up seven functional e –courts where the hammer is replaced with touch screen handbooks, a sleek, wide LCD screen on the wall and a touch screen handbook replacing the bulky files. Cumbersome paperwork has been replaced by digitalised files and judges can directly access them on a display monitor.
It has also started the e-filing facility in its company and tax jurisdictions cases. This facility has cut down the paper use massively and over 5000 trees are being saved annually.
The court has already sagaciously digitised over seven lakh files pertaining to old cases and had recycled all the papers.
It also has first ever Android mobile phone app with tabs for accessing its display board, case status, and case history in a one-click functionality on the home screens of users Android phones.
The High Court also has the e-court fee system at its premises to allow litigants to buy stamp papers--used in the filling of court cases, online, instead of having to physically stand in the queue. Also, the new system is fully secure. It could not be tampered with or counterfeited.
The e-court fee system is customer-friendly wherein instantly a litigant or a lawyer would make a payment for court fee. He would be immediately issued a receipt with a unique number and a bar code which could be verified at the registry at the time of filing of petitions. Once the verification is done, the number would get locked, eliminating even a remote possibility of its reuse.
Further, litigants or lawyers can make payment for court fees in cash or through cheque or pay an order or draft. They could also use the RTGS facility to make payment once the system goes online.
The court fee stamps would be available 24x7 to enable the easy and speedy filing of cases in a transparent manner ensuring the smooth administration of justice.