On Friday, the Gujarat High Court has issued a fresh Circular notifying the procedure for e-filing in urgent matters before it.

The Circular was issued in order to further streamline the process of email filing, and to remove certain difficulties faced by the Registry as well as the Advocates.

It has been intimitaded that from May 31 onwards, files of all the petitions in which urgent notes were accepted prior to March 24, 2020, will be retrieved from different sections of the High Court and the parties/ Advocates needn't send soft copies.

Addition to this, a separate e-mail address has been created for filing of urgent notes in such cases.

The Circular stated:

"Since the original files are being used, the Advocates are not required to send soft copy of the petition in which urgent note is accepted. Learned Government Pleader was apprised of this change in the functionality. After discussing with learned Public Prosecutor and the other managerial staff, learned Government Pleader has informed that the office of the State Law Officers has no objection to the above non-filing of soft copies of pending matters. Therefore, learned Advocates need not send soft copies to the State Law Officers also."

 It was mentioned that for cases that were filed after March 24, 2020, the present system of e-filing in place will continue and different e-mail addressed for different categories of matters and the concerned petitions should be forwarded to that specific category of e-mail address.

The authority has taken the decision considering the difficulty to download, print and register all the petitions in which urgent note is accepted, due to heavy load of inflow of filings and limited staff available in the Judicial Branch.

An order issued by Chief Justice Vikram Nath to this regard read:

"Everyday hundreds of fresh matters are being received through very same one email address and the Registry is not able to download the entire files received on day to day basis even if by sitting late in office. It was therefore suggested that if separate email addresses are given to different categories of matters, separate staff can be allotted for downloading, printing, registering and sending them to the residence of Hon'ble Judges on day to day basis."

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