"Harmful To Environment": Uttarakhand High Court Urges Lawyers To Avoid Enclosing Documents Otherwise Available Electronically

A Single Bench of Justice Lok Pal Singh made those remarks on nothing that the counsel for the petitioner in the case, Advocate Amar Shukla, had unnecessarily enclosed the xerox copies of the judgments with the petition.

While deprecating such a practice, the Judge clarified that according to Sections 37 and 38 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, these Acts, Regulations, notifications, Government Gazettes and Judgements are admissible as evidence even if their photocopies are not submitted to the Court.

The Court also mentioned Article 48A of the Constitution which states that the State shall make endeavours to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard the forests and wild life of the country. Besides this, Article 51-A (g) states that it shall be the duty of citizen to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wild life, and to have compassion for living creatures.

Expressing concern over the deteriorating environmental situation, Justice Singh stated that the paper used for making such submissions to the Court are also a contributing factor to the threat that the environment is facing right now.

"Throughout the world, the imbalance of ecology is being considered as a great threat to the future generations. We are losing the rivers and forests. The paper is the produce of forest and as we use the huge paper sometimes for no reason, it ultimately damages and affects the forest which effects the environment."

The Court also referred to the direction passed by the Supreme Court about filing the cases on A4 sheets and utilising both sides of the sheet.

Justice Singh stated that when such unnecessary documents are printed out, not only is the paper being wasted, but the ink is also being used in large quantities which ultimately, generates a huge amount of garbage.

Before concluding, he stated, "We have reached to an alarming position from where we cannot revive the environment and in fact the situation is getting worse by each passing day. Thus, we have to make joint efforts to save the environment. The small steps to save the environment should be taken immediately. Otherwise, it will be too late to save the environment."

The Court has now directed the Registry to circulate this order to office of the Bar Association and Bar Council of Uttarakhand to apprise the lawyers that they may not annex the copy of the Act, Rules, Gazette Notification and Judgments with the petitions.

Further, the Court has requested the Office of the Chief Standing Counsel to accept only two copies of the writ petitions for all the parties for the State and not to insist the parties/ litigants to supply more copies.

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