Supreme Court asks Madras High Court to take corrective measures after different versions of same order uploaded on website

The Supreme Court recently asked the Madras High Court to take corrective measures after the top Court discovered that two conflicting orders were uploaded by the High Court on its website in the same case, one of which was different from the order pronounced in open court. [J Mohammed Nazir and anr vs Mahasemam Trust and ors].An order uploaded on the website of the Madras High Court on September 7 was found to be different from the order pronounced in the case in open court on September 1, 2022.Initially, the order uploaded for this case on the High Court website on September 5 was in line with the operative portion read out in open court. However, by September 7, a modified order was uploaded. Taking a serious view of the discrepancy, a bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and BV Nagarathna initially directed the Registrar General of the High Court to conduct an inquiry on the issue."We have gone through both the orders. Certain paragraphs are conspicuously missing/deleted from the order which is now available on the website of the High Court," the Supreme Court observed in its order dated September 23, 2022..Accordingly, a report was submitted by the Registrar General on November 10, 2022, in a sealed cover. Accepting the explanation so presented, a bench of Justices Rastogi and Bela M Trivedi observed last week, "We have gone through the report and record our satisfaction with the justification tendered in passing of the order on 01.09.2022 of which reference has been made in our order dated 23.09.2022 and leave it for the High Court to take appropriate necessary course corrective measures which are required in the interest of justice.".The operative portion of the High Court order under scrutiny, as pronounced in the court, had directed the respondent to deposit ₹115 crores at an Indian Bank branch in Annanagar, Chennai. This part was later deleted when the order was uploaded on the Court's website. The Supreme Court set aside the High Court order and directed that the matter be listed before the High Court on February 8. The High Court was directed to consider the matter afresh. An earlier interim order of the High Court ordering status quo was also restored for a further period of six weeks.Senior Advocate K Subramanian with advocates EC Agrawala, Sunil Murarka, S Lakshmi Iyer, and Pankaj Agarwal appeared for the appellants. Senior Advocate Siddhartha Dave with advocates Sonam Gupta, Anurag Tandon, Taranjit Singh, Aarushi Singh, Anand Shankar Jha, Arpit Gupta, Abhishek Tiwari, Mano Goel, Shuvodeep Roy, Sachin Sharma, and Abhishek Kumar appeared for the respondents. .[Read Order]