India: Supreme Court mandates use of A4 size instead of green color legal paper

January 5, 2021
Hon’ble Supreme Court SC determines

The Hon’ble Supreme Court of India in a recent circular has directed the use of A4 size papers instead of green color legal papers (on both sides print) for all cases as well as Petitions filed before Supreme Court.[1] The Circular enumerates the following:

  • To bring uniformity in the use & printing of paper and minimizing consumption of paper, the Hon’ble Court has directed usage of best quality A4 size paper (29.7 cm x 21 cm) having not less than 75 GSM printed on both sides of the paper having Font- Times New Roman, Font size- 14, single & half line spacing (for quotations & indents- Font size is 12 with single line spacing), with margin of 2cm on top & bottom and 4cm on left & right, on all the Petitions, Pleadings, Affidavits or any other documents which would be filed in the Supreme Court;
  • The Hon’ble Court has further directed that in accordance with the provisions of Order LIII, Rule 2 of the Supreme Court Rules, 2013, each communication directed from the Registry of the Court shall only be mailed to the concerned Advocate-on-Record followed by an SMS alert on the registered number of the Advocate-on-Record and thereafter the Registry shall discontinue the practice of sending the communication through hard copy.
  • It has also been directed by the Hon’ble Court that the Misc. Applications, Review Petitions, Curative Petitions and Contempt Petitions in disposed of matters may be accepted by the Filing Counter of the Registry by following the existing procedure w.r.t the fresh matters, in the manner of 1+1 (1 set of original papers + 1 paperbook) after curing the defects and the remaining paperbooks shall be filed by the advocates/parties-in-person;
  • Where there are more than one volume in a matter then in such a case a common index is to be placed in the first volume and a separate index of each volume is to be placed in the respective volume(s).

The Hon’ble Apex Court’s direction in the matter is a positive effort towards environment protection and conservation. The initiative taken by the Hon’ble Supreme Court will protect the environment from further degradation. Earlier the petitions were drafted on ‘legal papers’, which were bigger than A4 size sheets and only single-sided printing was allowed on the papers.

[1] https://main.sci.gov.in/pdf/Circular_filing.pdf

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