New Delhi, Jan 2 (PTI) In a big boost to Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud’s decision to digitise judicial functioning, over 4,000 lawyers on Monday marked their presence in the Supreme Court proceedings by using the ‘Advocate Appearance’ portal instead of usual manual procedures using paper slips.
The CJI, on December 16 last year, had announced that the portal would be functional from the new year and consequently, the advocates would not be required to file appearance slip manually, but would log into the Advocate Appearance portal to mark their presence.
“Approximately 4,400 online advocate appearance slips have been recorded today,” an apex court official said on the first day of the launch of the portal.
Earlier, advocates used to write their names along with details like the case and its serial number on a prescribed paper form to mark their presence in a hearing to ensure that their names get reflected in court orders or judgements.
In yet another step towards digitisation and making the Supreme Court a “paperless” court, the CJI had announced that the portal for marking the appearances of lawyers would be launched in the new year.
“We are streamlining the process of appearance memos. Exactly what is uploaded by the lawyers, we will get it. The court masters will not have to type it,” the CJI had said.
The apex court, in a statement, had said that “manual filing of advocate appearance slip will be history. On the first working day of the Year 2023; AOR may submit an Appearance Slip through the new portal”.
The appearance portal is “another step to make the Registry working paperless under the directions of Hon’ble Chief Justice of India, Dr Justice Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud,” it had said.
The portal has been designed and developed for bringing speed, accuracy and efficacy for recording the appearance of the advocates in the record of proceedings, the statement had said.
“The Advocates on Record (AoR) may certify the appearance of Advocates in a matter and send the appearance slip through this portal,” it had said, adding the existing process for appearance slip is “cumbersome”.
The appearance slip is received through advocates directly in the court or through email on the day the case is listed and verification of the AOR is done manually in the existing process, it had said.
The appearance slip will be received online through the Advocate Appearance portal and at the time of login, verification of the AoR is to be done by software through One Time Password (OTP), it had said.
“This online facility is also an environment-friendly step through which approximately 2,00,000 papers per annum will be saved,” it added.
Recently, the apex court has also operationalised a separate portal to deal with queries sought under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
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