The Supreme Court has issued a circular dated 5 March, intimating that judicial side filings should be made in A4 size paper, of the prescribed quality, with printing on both sides, from April 1 onwards.

A circular in this regard from the Secretary-general of the apex court stated “With a view to bring about uniformity in the issue of paper and printing thereupon and to minimize consumption of paper and consequently to save the environment” the apex court issued the following guidelines. They are:

Superior quality 75 GSM, A4 size paper is to be used with both sides being printed on with the font being Times New Roman, font size 14 and one and a half line spacing with a margin of 4 cm on left and right and 2 cm on the top and bottom, in all the documents to be filed in the Court. All the communications from the Registry will be sent to the concerned Advocates – on – Record through email, followed by an SMS alert on the registered mobile number of the concerned Advocate – on – Record. The practice of sending a communication through hard copy is to be discontinued. The filing counter of the Registry following the existing procedure regarding fresh matters are allowed to accept Misc. Applications, Review Petitions, Curative Petitions and Contempt Petitions in disposed of matters in 1 set of original papers and 1 paper book and once the defects are cured the rest of the paper books shall be filed. A common index has been allowed to be placed in the first volume in case there are more than one volume in a matter a separate index for each volume shall be placed.

The circular further urged that sincere and earnest effort must be made for the economical consumption of paper, by using both sides of the papers, while also ensuring that the content is legible on both sides. Earlier, on 14 January, the Court had issued a circular informing that such measures will be implemented on the administrative side filings.

In the last 12 months, as many as 61,520 cases were filed in the Supreme Court (SC) between October 2016 and September 2017, submitting that using paper printed on both sides in filings would have saved nearly 2,953 trees and 246 million liter water (24,600 tankers–considering one standard tanker-truck holds 10,000 liters), stated an analysis by the Centre for Accountability Systemic Change.