CJI Khehar Says Supreme Court Will Go Completely Digital In 6 to 7 Months

In a bid to make the judiciary eco-friendly and save funds, Chief Justice of India(CJI) J S Khehar said that the Supreme Court will go paperless in a few months.

The comment came after Justice Khehar asked senior advocate Indira Jaising to file an application if she had any grievance that she wanted to be heard by the court on the designation of advocates as senior advocates.

Subsequently, Jaising refused to  file application saying that Supreme Court talks about protecting the environment but it is the biggest guzzler of paper. She said it is high time the apex court reduced paper usage while refusing to put down her objections in paper, reported The Economic Times.

Responding to Jaising, CJI assured her that the court would go completely digital soon.

“After another six months, you don’t need to file any documents... we will get all trial courts and high courts records electronically and start dealing with the cases through the electronic medium,” CJI Khehar said.

Justice Khehar said the court will soon dispense with the need of filing voluminous documents and paperbooks as it is in the process of digitising the entire court records across the country.

He said the apex court will collect all the records electronically from the lower courts and the high courts so that there is no need to file hard copies.

The court has set up a three-judge bench to hear petitions seeking framing of uniform guidelines for designating lawyers as senior by the apex court and the high courts across the country.

In a similar move, last year, Prime Ministers Office Jitendra Singh had written to all ministers to take urgent action to shift to paperless functioning mode in a time bound manner.

Central government ministries and departments were informed that they will be rewarded for successful implementation of e-Office or paperless office initiative. The move was aimed at improving the ease of governance and expediting the administrative process.