Documents filed in the Supreme Court of India can now have material printed on both sides of A4 sheets, said a circular issued by the Court on Thursday, 13 February. Until now, the practice was to print legal documents on only one side of a sheet.
This comes after a report by The Quint on 31 October 2019 which showed how printing legal documents on just one side leads to a wastage of approximately 48 million sheets of paper by the Supreme Court.
Our report drew attention to a petition filed before the SC regarding the same in 2017. It also illustrated, that if India's entire judicial system took up the practice of printing on both sides of a paper, then the water saved in the production of paper can fulfill the water requirements of Mumbai for fourteen whole days. The water saved from the SC alone, can run Bengaluru for a day!
The decision by the SC was taken after a meeting between the judges of the committee of rationalisation of use of papers, the Supreme Court Advocates on Record Association (SCAORA), and the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA).
SCBA Secretary Ashok Arora confirmed the same to the The Quint, also stating that this measure may be be made mandatory in some time.
The Quint welcomes this decision of the SC which takes cognisance of the environmental responsibilities of the Judiciary, and hopes that other courts in the country adopt the same practice soon.
Watch our report on how much paper can be saved by the Indian judiciary, as a whole, if it printed on both sides, below:
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