Allahabad HC Summons Parties Through Whatsapp [Read Order]

The Allahabad High Court recently joined ranks with the handful of Courts across the country that are experimenting with the usage of technology in judicial proceedings.

In a matter relating to the elections to the Bar Council of Uttar Pradesh, a Bench comprising Justice Tarun Agarwala and Justice Ashok Kumar on Friday sought to ensure presence of the Chairman and Secretary of the Bar Council through WhatsApp.

“We had further directed Sri Siddharth Nandan, the learned counsel assisting Sri T.P. Singh, the learned Senior Advocate for the petitioner to send "WhatsApp message" to the Chairman, Sri Anil Pratap Singh and Dr. Ram Jeet Singh Yadav, Secretary/the Election Officer on their mobile requesting them to appear before the Court today. We also find that notices of the petition were duly served to the Chairman as well as to the Election Officer on their mobile by the petitioners as well as on the e-mail address of the Chairman and Secretary of the Bar Council of U.P. In spite of service of notices, respondents no. 4 and 5 have failed to appear or give instructions to their counsel,” the Court noted, while chiding the two for “dereliction of duty”.

Not long ago, the Delhi High Court had also ordered service of summons on one of the defendants through Whatsapp, text message and email. The Bombay High Court had soon followed the trend, and had served summons via Whatsapp, after one of the defendants in a copyright infringement case was being particularly evasive. The case concerned allegations of copyright infringement against Producers of the Kannada movie ‘Pushpaka Vimana’ that was released earlier this year.