The Supreme Court has taken several environment friendly steps, issuing new guidelines regarding the use of papers and the procedures of filing new cases.
“With a view to bring about uniformity in the issue of paper and printing thereupon and to minimize consumption of paper and consequently to save the environment” the apex court issued the following guidelines, a circular from the Secretary general of the Supreme Court said. They are:
- Superior quality 75 GSM, A4 size paper is to be used with both sides being printed on with the font being Times New Roman, font size 14 and one and a half line spacing with margin of 4 cm on left and right and 2 cm on the top and bottom, in all the documents to be filed in the Court.
- All the communications from the Registry will be sent to the concerned Advocates – on – Record through email, followed by an SMS alert on the registered mobile number of the concerned Advocate – on – Record. The practice of sending communication through hard copy is to be discontinued.
- The filing counter of the Registry following the existing procedure regarding fresh matters is allowed to accept Misc. Applications, Review Petitions, Curative Petitions and Contempt Petitions in disposed of matters in 1 set of original papers and 1 paperbook and once the defects are cured the rest of the paperbooks shall be filed.
- A common index has been allowed to be placed in first volume in case there are more than one volume in a matter a separate index for each volume shall be placed.
The first and the second directions will come into force from 1st April and the rest will come into effect immediately.
Almost two years back, a PIL was filed in the SC by the Centre for Accountability Systemic Change(SASC) C seeking directions to use paper printed on both sides in pleadings and filings before the apex court. Another one filed on August 8, 2018, in the Delhi High Court by CASC–with the above objective–said using paper printed on both sides would have saved over 27,000 trees and 2,000 million liter water based on the number of cases filed in one month before the subordinate courts and high courts across the country. The petitions highlight large-scale paper consumption–double-spaced typing and wide margins–in courts. “Using line spacing as 1.5 instead of 2 causes 25% savings of paper. Similarly, using smaller fonts cause 30% savings of paper,” the petitions said.
In the 12 months before CASC filed the petitions, as many as 61,520 cases were filed in the Supreme Court (SC) between October 2016 and September 2017, and using paper printed on both sides in filings would have saved nearly 2,953 trees and 246 million litre water (24,600 tankers–considering one standard tanker-truck holds 10,000 litre), an analysis by the CASC had said.
Read Notification Below
