On Independence Day, the Bombay high court will start its first paperless court. Petitions will be filled on pen drives and advocates will argue their cases by referring to information stored in laptops.

The Bombay high court, will be India’s second high court, after Delhi, to have an e-court.

The e-court, presided over by justice Nitin Jamdar, will commence from August 15, and will take up company matters to start with. Later, it will also take up other cases.

Prothonotary, senior master, DV Sawant said, “This is a pilot project and it will be extended to other courts soon.”

The Bombay high court has already started e-payment of court fees which has received good response.

In the e-court, litigants have been asked to lodge soft copies either on a pen drive or compact disk (CD). The date of presentation of a pen drive or CD shall be deemed to be the date of filing of the petition. However, as a precautionary measure, initially, the petitioners have also been asked to file a hard copy for some time.

The e-court programme is a central government initiative to computerise district and subordinate courts and to upgrade ICT infrastructure of the Supreme Court and high courts.

Under the project, 2,249 courts in 969 court complexes are expected to be computerised by March 31, 2014.