With a view to save paper, the Supreme Court has taken several environment friendly steps and has issued guidelines to this effect regarding the use of papers and the procedures of filing new cases.1. According to the guidelines, 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...
With a view to save paper, the Supreme Court has taken several environment friendly steps and has issued guidelines to this effect regarding the use of papers and the procedures of filing new cases.
1. According to the guidelines, 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.
2. The guidelines further state that the practice of sending communication through hard copy is to be discontinued. 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.
3. The filing counter of the Registry following the existing procedure regarding fresh matters is allowed to accept Miscellaneous 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.
The Court has directed that the first and the second directions be bought into force from 1st April and the rest will come into effect immediately.
A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed in the Supreme Court by the Centre for Accountability Systemic Change (CASC) seeking directions to use paper printed on both sides in pleadings and filings before the Supreme Court.
Another PIL filed in August 2018, in the Delhi High Court by CASC estimated that using paper printed on both sides would have saved over 27,000 trees and 2,000 million litre 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. According to the petition, using line spacing as 1.5 instead of 2 leads to 25% savings of paper. Similarly, use of smaller fonts leads to 30% savings of paper.