Enabling facility for filling petitions through e-mails to help advocates and litigants as entry to Karnataka High Court is restricted due to COVID-19 pandemic has turned out to be a hassle for the court’s registry.
A rise in instances of some advocates not only sending repeated e-mails but also using nasty language against the officers of the registry has forced Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka to summon one such advocate to be personally present before the court through videoconference last week.
The Chief Justice had been repeatedly requesting the advocate during hearings over last month not to send e-mails unnecessarily. “Though the court has to initiate contempt of court action for sending such e-mail, we thought of calling you through videoconference to compliment you for sending such an email and telling us we don’t understand anything,” he told the advocate.
The court’s registry, which received the e-mail from the advocate, had replied seeking some clarification but the advocate instead responded in nasty language saying “you don’t understand anything”.
The advocate, while apologising for the e-mail, said that it was one of his juniors, who was not well conversant in English, who sent the e-mail. However, the Chief Justice said if so, then the task of sending the e-mail to the court should not have been assigned to the junior.
The Chief Justice expressed serious displeasure over the conduct of some advocates and litigants sending e-mails unnecessarily multiple times despite clear guidelines published in the SOP on procedure for e-filling petitions through e-mail.
The advocates will have to be sensible in sending e-mails for urgent hearing when the staff of courts are working under extreme pressure, and with skeletal staff as some have tested positive for COVID-19 and many judicial officers and staff in quarantine, he the Chief Justice said. He disclosed that he had been spending six hours every day reading e-mails as it is the Chief Justice, as per the SOP, who has to decide the factor of urgency to hear a case. He also pointed out that once an advocate sent an e-mail to his personal account during early hours.
If such insensitive tendency continues among advocates, then the court may have to think of imposing costs of ₹1 lakh for sending unnecessary e-mails and for using inappropriate language, he said.
