Judges, Stenographers Facing Difficulties As State Website Not Updated With Latest Versions of State Enactments and Rules : Bombay High Court

The bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice MS Karnik directed the State to file its report showing compliance of an earlier order passed in 2017 regarding regular updates on the Maharashtra Government's official web portal.

Significantly the court sought details about the lack of clean drinking water in courts and tribunals across the State.

On May 15, 2017, a coordinate bench headed by Justice Abhay Oka had passed several directions for the improvement of infrastructure in courts and tribunals.

Directions were also passed regarding making available uploaded versions of the State Enactments and rules within six months of the order. The order further cites a similar direction passed in the 1996 case of Sanjeev Gorwadkar vs State of Maharashtra.

During the hearing on Monday, the court mentioned that the disposed of PIL was listed on the court's instructions. "We have listed this PIL as stenos or judges are not able to getting government's documents."

The court ordered that if the State had not complied with the previous order, a timeline indicating when will it be completed should be submitted in an affidavit within two weeks.

Clean Drinking Water

Advocate Uday Warunjikar for the petitioner submitted that several court complexes still lack basic infrastructure like clean drinking water. The bench asked him to provide a list of such court so that appropriate directions can be given.

"Since Dr. Warunjikar, learned advocate for one set of petitioners has highlighted that scarcity of drinking water in Court complexes is a continuing problem, we request him to provide, on the adjourned date, a list of Court complexes where drinking water is scarce and which immediately require our intervention to provide drinking water facilities," the bench observed and adjoured the matter to February 14.

Case Title - Mumbai Grahak Panchayat and Another vs State of Maharashtra

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