Rajasthan HC To Publish Only Internet Cause List From November 18; Does Away With Manually Printed Causelist [Read Order]

An order in this regard was passed by Justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma, in a petition titled Jitendra Singh & Ors. v. State of Rajasthan & Ors., S.B. W. P. (C) No. 4427/2018.

The issue of discrepancies in manually printed cause list came to be discussed because the above said case had been numbered differently on the internet cause list and on the manually published cause list. In this regard the court noted,

"A complete chaos has arisen in the court as there are as many as 279 cases listed and it is difficult for the concerned Reader as well as for the concerned Stenographer to correctly note down the orders relating to each case.

It is noticed that there are discrepancies between number of the cases as mentioned in the cause list published at the Internet and number shown in the cause list which has been physically distributed to some of the lawyers resulting in causing confusion and chaos in the court proceedings."

The court said that such inadvertent discrepancies were being used by the advocates to seek adjournment by taking an excuse that their names or the case name is not properly printed, despite there being a functional "Rajasthan High Court E-Services" Mobile App wherein a lawyer can find complete information about his case posted in a particular Court on a particular day.

Therefore, in order to impede unnecessary delay in court proceedings and in order to further the Go-green Initiative, where under information to lawyers is sent by Email, the court decided to adopt a singular method of publishing cases. In this behalf, the court said,

"With a view to do away with all kind of doubts which may arise on account of typographical error/delay in distribution or errors in publication of the manually printed cause list.

… Taking into consideration that there is need of the hour to preserve our ecology and it is necessary that the Judiciary must take steps for paper-less work…this Court holds that it would be most appropriate that singular method of locating one's cases should be adopted by all lawyers and litigants."

Accordingly, the court directed that there shall be no further publication of printed manual cause list by the Registry and the only cause list, which shall be published, would be on the official website of the High Court with information on the mobile application.

The court said,

"The Registrar (CPC) shall accordingly act with the guidance and support of the Registrar (Judicial) in this regard so that there may not be any infirmity. Henceforth, no excuse shall be entertained by the Court with regard to non-publication of names in the cause list as mobile application/website would be duly mentioning the names of the cases as well as names of the lawyers.

…practice of publication of printed cause list and its distribution shall be dispensed with w.e.f. 18th November, 2019 henceforth."

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