Above: Image by World-fly from Pixabay    

This year when Justice D N Patel took charge as Chief Justice of Delhi High Court, he said he is “enjoying” his work at this paperless court and wished that judges of other courts can also have a similar experience.

His wishful thinking of courts going paperless remains a herculean task as courts in India still use billion sheets of paper.

The news portal www.thequint.com has done a fine analysis as how if courts become paperless what kind of impact it will have on the environment and on improving the justice delivery in India.

Here are some of the interesting facts and figures revealed by www.thequint.com in a video:

• Hundreds of petitions printed on thousands of paper are discarded after single-use.
• Every year Indian courts use 11 billion sheets of paper.
• Every year, Supreme Court hears 60,000 cases.
• The Supreme Court only allows petitions printed only on one side of paper
• A PIL submitted in 2017 in the apex court stated that 48 million sheets of paper is used by SC in a year.
• Now add to that 1,13,000 cases are heard by high courts in a year and use 813 million sheets of paper.
• Lower courts hear 12.5 million cases in a year and use 10 billion sheets of paper.
• A total of 11 billion sheets of paper are used by Supreme Court, high courts and lower courts in a year.
• One tree uses 8,333 sheets of paper using 10 litres of water
• In totality 1.3 million trees are cut and 109 billion litres of water is used
• If we print both sides then we can save 54 billion litres of water which can provide water to Mumbai for 14 days
• The water saved from Supreme Court alone can meet a day’s water requirement of Bengaluru.
• How can we fix this: Digitization of court work, E-filing of cases and digitally storing court documents
• By doing this—case records will be accessible to trial courts, high courts and Supreme Court at the same time. It will allow courts to deal with cases faster

—India Legal Bureau