The Supreme Court had recently approved the filing of documents on A4 size papers with print on both sides. The practice of printing on both sides of the paper will be beneficial for both the advocates and the judiciary staff.
A decision to this effect has been taken in environmental interest, in a meeting of the Committee for Rationalization of Use of Papers in the Supreme Court of India and for Introduction of Paperless Courts with members of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) and the Supreme Court Advocates on Record Association (SCAORA).
In 2018, a Public Interest Litigation was also filed in the Supreme Court by Centre for Accountability and Systemic Change (CASC) for the same issues. In this PIL, the petitioner contended that the natural resources could be saved just by a simple step of printing the documents on both the sides for pleadings and also the filing.
Less paper consumption will directly lead to a decrease in the number of trees being cut down and this will proportionately affect the water consumption that will be used to grow those trees.
In Courts, on an average more than 2 Lacs papers are spent annually for filing the documents. If we start printing on both sides of paper then we can save our money, papers and contribute to the betterment of our environment as well. The damage that is being done to the environment be it in the name of building infrastructure or through natural calamities as in the Amazon forest in Africa and the importance of it need not be mentioned. The environment needs to be protected at any cost.
Both side’s printing will affect the burden of Court files and the cost of papers. And advocates will charge these expenses from their clients. So indirectly this will help in the reduction of the expenditure of the clients as well. Roughly around 150 papers are used to file a case in the Court. And if the printing is done in a duplex manner then this number will come down to 75. Now, it’s easy to visualize the impact of this change will going to have on saving paper and Mother Nature too.
The Supreme Court has taken a good decision which is in the best interest of justice for all.