Parties-in-person have utilized e-filing facility more than advocates: Registrar tells Karnataka High Court

Parties-in-person have utilized e-filing facility more than lawyers in the High Court as well as subordinate Courts, the Karnataka High Court was told on Wednesday. .A report stating the same was filed by the Registrar (Computers) of the High Court before a Bench of Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Suraj Govindaraj. "The report states that as on July 13, parties-in-person who have registered themselves as users have utilized this facility much more than the advocates," the Bench noted in its order passed on Wednesday. .Not many advocates utilize e-filing facility: Karnataka High Court directs Registry to reveal total number of cases e-filed.The Division Bench was hearing a petition filed by Dilraj Rohit Sequeira in 2019 seeking e-filing facility in High Court as well as subordinate Courts..The July 13 report was submitted pursuant to the Court's direction wherein it had ordered the Registrar (Computer) to file a report on the facilities provided for e-filing of cases in the High Court as well as the district and trial courts.The report was also to have data on the number of cases e-filed so far..When the matter was taken up for hearing on Wednesday, the Court was informed that though the e-filing facility of cases through the portal was enabled long time back, very few members of the bar actually utilized the said facility. .The Court then proceeded to direct the Registrar (Computers) to forward the report to the petitioner, who appeared in-person. .The matter will be next taken up on August 13. .In an earlier order, the Court had said,"The process of e-filing will not be successful unless all the pending matters are scanned. The process of scanning is a tedious process as the papers in each file are required to be separated. The operation of scanning requires huge space, funds and manpower. Moreover, the servers will have to be updated. Thus, for implementing e-filing, there is a requirement of adequate space for scanning and hardware and software."