Fresh Plea In Allahabad HC For Use Of A4 Sheets With Double-Sided Printing In Court Filings

The petition has been filed by 7 law students through Advocates Shashwat Anand, Ankur Azad, Rajesh Inamdar and Sarveshwari Prasad.

It may be noted that this is the second writ petition filed by the Petitioners on this issue. Earlier, the High Court had directed them to approach the Registrar General with a demand notice on the Administrative side, vide order dated July 27, 2020.

Allahabad HC Directs Petitioners To Approach Registrar General For Use Of A4 Sheets With Double-Sided Printing In Court Filings

Thereby, the Court had granted liberty to invoke its writ jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution, upon refusal or inaction of the Registry.

In the present PIL, the Petitioners have informed the Court that a Demand Notice dated 28/07/2020 and subsequently, a Reminder Notice dated 15/10/2020 were served upon the Registry of the Allahabad High Court. However, no response has come therefrom, till date.

The Petitioners seek to downsize environmental degradation, by eliminating unnecessary and excess use of paper, which directly equates to, inter alia, the cutting of trees, depletion and over-exploitation of forests and water resources, and also large-scale pollution.

"The rational usage of paper is in essence, the saving of the cutting of trees, conservation of forests and water resources, and protection of the environment, wild life and human life, in conformity with the Constitutional mandate to the State as envisaged under Article 48-A, read with, Article 51-A(g), and enshrined under Right to Life, Right to Water and Right to Live in a Clean and Healthy Environment as guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution," the Petitioners aver.

They have further pointed out that usage of Legal Size Paper with one side printing costs more and unnecessarily pinches the pockets of the litigants, much less, hits hard upon the pockets of poor litigants coming from weaker and underprivileged sections.

"Saving the paper costs, by using A4 Size sheets with printing on both sides, and thereby saving the unwarranted and unnecessary costs of the proceedings, would directly benefit the ordinary litigants, muchless be a boon for the poor litigants from weaker and underprivileged sections of the society, and the same would indirectly boost the economy of the State by keeping the money in the pockets of the people/litigants, as it would augment the demand and accordingly the supply," the plea states.

As per the Petitioners, one-sided printing on water-marked/ foolscap/ legal-size paper is a "colonial era practice" prevalent in the times of type-writers, which allowed printing only on one side and the water-marked/ foolscap/ legal-size paper was used so as to preserve the files for a longer period of time.

However now, it is submitted, the same is a futile practice given the technological advancement, enhanced quality of A4 size and digitization of files and court records.

The Petitioners have therefore sought that suitable amendments be made in the Allahabad High Court Rules, 1952, so as to give effect to the directions for the use of A4 Size Paper, with printing on both sides of the paper, for all the pleadings, petitions, affidavits or other documents to be filed across all the courts in UP.

So far as saving of paper through e-Courts and e-filing is concerned, it is claimed that the same is meagre and negligible.

"E-Courts have been established and made functional since 2017, still, a mere 2740 cases (2023 at Allahabad and 717 at Lucknow Bench), 6071 Misc. Applications (4055 at Allahabad and 2016 at Lucknow Bench) and 548 Caveat (at Allahabad) have been filed in electronic mode (online) under the eCourts from the date of inauguration of the e-Courts at Allahabad (19/08/2017), which is only a miniscule fraction of and pales in comparison with the total number of cases instituted through the physical filing mode(s)," the Petitioners submitted.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court and the High Courts of Calcutta, Karnataka, Kerala, Sikkim and Tripura have already permitted the use of A4 size papers, with print on both the sides, in a bid to minimize paper consumption.

On Wednesday this week, the Rajasthan High Court issued notice on a petition seeking to implement the use of A4 Sheets with double-sided printing, instead of legal-size paper with one side printing, for filings in all the courts across the State.