Delhi High Court Issues Practice Directions To Dispense With Physical Signatures On Daily Orders Of Judicial Cases

The Delhi High Court has issued practice directions in order to dispense with the physical signatures on the daily orders, which are not important or final orders and judgments, of the judicial cases, digitally signed either by the Chief Justice, Acting Chief Justice, Judges or their Private Secretary or designated officer and by officers holding courts.

The Practice Directions issued by the Acting Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi will be applicable on the daily orders passed on or after 2nd May 2022 and sent on the dedicated server.

The practice directions are as follows:

- Hon'ble the Chief Justice/Hon'ble the Acting Chief Justice, Hon'ble Judges may either personally digitally sign the daily orders or get the same digitally signed by the Private Secretary/designated officer(s) (which are not important/final orders and judgments) using the in-house software developed by the I.T.Cell and send the same to the dedicated server (NIC VM).

- The officers holding courts shall send the daily orders to the dedicated server, after affixing their digital signatures.

- The copy of the order(s) transmitted to the dedicated server will be stored on the Local NAS in a secure manner, which will be accessible to only authorized persons.

- The digitally signed daily orders transmitted onto the dedicated server will be uploaded on the website of this Court (via an automatic process) so that the same is accessible to the Advocates and public at large.

- The copy of the all the daily orders will also be preserved on the NIC Cloud, access to which will be given to the Private Secretary/Court Mater/AOJ/Sr. Personal Assistant/Personal Assistant/Restorer/ACM/Dealing Assistants of Judicial Branches based on their Personal Information System (PIS) credential.

- The print-out of the digitally signed daily order can be taken out by the respective officer/officials from the NIC Cloud which will reflect the following line "Order is downloaded from the DHC Secured Server on _______ (date) at _________ (time)" and can be placed on the judicial file for record purposes and can also be used for other official purposes by the Registry.

- In case of digitally signed daily order(s), if the litigant or his/her counsel wishes to secure physically signed copy of the order(s), a request for this purpose will have to be submitted in the Branch concerned within 30 days of the date of order. In that eventuality, the request will be placed before the concerned Hon'ble Bench/Judge on the administrative side.

Click Here To Read Practice Directions