Will go paperless in phases, says Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Sunday said it would implement Chief Justice J S Khehar's promise to make the highest court go paperless “in phases“ as the method envisaged in the project was new to judges and advocates and involved “various technical and functional issues“.

On May 10, the CJI had declared before PM Narendra Modi that from July 3, appeals against high court judgments in the SC would involve filing only a few pages of the grounds of appeal which would save the country millions of pages every year, and consequently help protect trees and the environment.

On Sunday , the SC's deputy registrar Rakesh Sharma issued a press release, which said, “At the first instance, only fresh matters listed in the first five courts, that is those headed by CJI Khehar and Justices Dipak Misra, J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi and Madan B Lokur, will be accessed by the judges digitally on an interactive display device.“

Asked whether the judges in the first five courts would access case files of fresh cases through computer and not hear arguments while perus ing paper-book case files, Sharma told TOI that “in the first five courts, each judge will have a computer before him and the judges will peruse fresh case files on the computer“.

Asked whether appeals could be filed in the SC against HC judgments without involving bulky paper work, Sharma was non committal but asserted that the Integrated Court Management Information System was almost ready to help the apex court registry gear up towards implementing the CJI's promise. However, he did not have any information about digitisation of case records of HCs, without the completion of which the CJI's promise of making paperless filing of appeals in the SC will remain unimplementable.