Bench:
- Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia
- Justice K.S.P Radhakrishnan
- Justice Swatenter Kumar
Issue:
Extension of services of court by e-mail.
Facts:
- There was a necessity to avoid the delay in the process of serving and consequent piling up arrears.
- Thus, the facility serving court notices through e-mail was extended in addition to the normal modes of services which already exist in the Supreme Court Rules.
- Order of the Bench:
- Notices can be served by e-mail along with normal mode of service. For this, the advocate(s)-on record shall furnish a soft copy of the appeal/petition in the PDF format to the filing counter at the time of filing of the appeal/petition.
- The advocate(s)-on record would submit respondent’s e-mail address on the filing counter simultaneously in addition to the hard copy’s submission.
- If the court issues notice (in this event alone), the registry would send the same notice on the e-mail of the respondent(s).
- The above mentioned notice would also be send to the advocate(s)-on record of the respondent(s). the advocate(s) has to provide his/her e-mail address while filing a caveat for enabling this service.
- Within two weeks from the order, Cabinet Secretariat were asked to provide centralized e-mail addresses of various Ministries/Departments/Regulatory Authorities along with the name of the Nodal Officers (if they were appointed already) for the purpose of the service.
Judgement:
The service of court notices by e-mail was extended in addition to the modes of service mentioned in the Supreme Court Rules. At that time, for time bring, the facility was extended to commercial litigation and for those cases where the Advocate(s)-on record seek urgent interim reliefs. The Court also directed for the order to be sent to all High Courts for necessary action and the civil appeals were admitted as well.
