CJI green signal to notices on email
Putting his words about the use of the modern technology into action, the Chief Justice of India has issued an order for serving the notice to the parties in a case through email to speed up the disposal and prevent advocates taking adjournments on the premise of non-service of notices.
In a step considered as a giant leap forward, CJI S.H. Kapadia in an administrative order said, “in addition to the usual mode of service prescribed in Supreme Court rules, 1966, notices may be effected by email for which advocates on record will at the time of filing of any petition or appeal have to furnish soft copy of the same to the registry along with the e-mail addresses.” Earlier, last month the CJI while hearing a case of Central Electricity Regulatory Commission against the Hydroelectric Power Corporation had taken serious view of the lawyers making the plea for adjournment as notices were not served to the parties concerned.
During the hearing, the CJI had proposed to make issuing notices to the parties in a case through e-mail to avoid any delay and the notification came as an immediate follow up step in this direction. However, the experiment initially will be confined to the “commercial” cases, in which lot of delay is caused in disposal due to non-service of notices. Many times non-service was being used as a “deliberate ploy” by the advocates to linger on the proceedings.
In order to put an end to any delaying tactics, the notification made it specific that all the companies engaged in any litigation in the apex court, public sector undertakings, Union ministries, government departments, regulatory authorities and any other nodal agency responsible to become party in a commercial dispute, were required to furnish their email addresses to the court registry immediately.
“The Cabinet secretariat shall provide centralised e-mail addresses of various ministries, government dep-artments, regulatory authorities and the nodal officers within two weeks,” the order said. Justice Kapatia, who after assuming office in May last has taken various steps to improve the functioning of the courts by enforcing the rules strictly, also had made pronouncements in public functions about the use of latest technology as the part of his new strategy to improve the functioning of the judiciary at all level. Though the notification is confined to the cases filed in the apex court, it is expected to be extended to all the 21 high courts in the country gradually.
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