The Chief Justice of High Court of Jammu & Kashmir had laid down certain directions through an Office Circular on Sunday for digital filling during lockdown in the nation.
It was stated in the circular that the complete petition through an advocate/party shall be sent through email address of the advocate filing or the party in person in the soft form to the Registrar Judicial of the concerned wing of the High Court. Thereafter, the soft copy will be sent to the office of the Advocate General/ASGI/Govt Pleaders.
“A brief note explaining the extreme urgency shall also accompany the petition”, the Chief Justice stated in the circular, and if considered as favourable, necessary intimation will be done to the Petitioner/Advocate about the time and listing date. In continuation, it was directed that on the availability of the required court fee which if not available for affixation on the documents, an application for extension of time will have to accompany the filing.
As per the directions, the signing of each page of the petition by the Petitioner/AoR/lawyer before being scanned is a must and the court had made it optional for the attestation of the affidavit which can be furnished later on when the normal working of the court gets restored. Therefore, upon restoration of normal working hours of the court, hard copies of the petition as required under the rules has to be supplied within one week of the resumption of ordinary filing.
The digital filling of the main petition will be accompanied by filing of any counter affidavit, reply, civil application, miscellaneous civil application, if any in the same manner and the affidavit will have to be attached with the petition certifying that the hard copy of the petition which was sent by an email for urgent hearing is the original of the petition/ application. It will also certify that all documents are true copies of the originals scanned copies of which have been sent in soft format in the email. The party who has electronically filed the scanned copies thereof will be responsible for producing the hard copies of the pleadings and documents, if any, and proving their genuineness.
In case of pending matters, if the application is filed prior to the lockdown period and if the main matter is already scanned and available in DMS of the High Court, the soft copy will be forwarded to the Judge hearing the matter by the concerned Registrar Judicial. It was thus mentioned in the circular that if it is not possible to retrieve record of the main matter from the High Court server then if permitted by the Court, the party/advocate will send the soft copy of the entire record including the interim/final orders passed in the case along with petition, if any available with the party with a certificate that the record is true and correct and then the court will decide whether to proceed further in the matter or not and in case any interim order has been passed/vacated/modified in the case, specific mention of the same will have to be made conspicuously in the petition.
Lastly, it was directed to mentioned “EMG” as a prefix with the registration number of the cases filed during the lock down period.
-India Legal Bureau