The Karnataka High Court on Monday granted relief to litigants in over 7,000 petitions, filed in its three Benches in Bengaluru, Dharwad and Kalaburagi from March 21 to July 31, by temporarily waiving certain norms, required to be followed while filling petitions.
Also, the Court said that all the petitions which were dismissed for not complying with the norms as per the rules during this period would be restored and treated as pending petitions.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Ashok S. Kinagi passed the order while hearing a PIL petition suo motu initiated by the Court to remove technical difficulties faced in functioning of the courts.
The Bench noted that a large number of advocates and litigants will have to be allowed to enter the court premises to rectify the mistakes in complying with norms as the registry had pointed out lapses after filling of petitions. However, to reduce footfall on court premises and protect the interests of litigants and their lawyers, certain norms were waived for the time being, the Bench said.
The norms, except non-payment/insufficient payment of court fees; bar of limitation prescribed in law on maintainability of proceedings,;non-filling of petitions in two sets for division benches; failure to produce notification, order, endorsements, communication challenged; serving of a copy of plea for stay on government advocate; and serving petitions to the office of the public prosecutor, are waived.
This will ensure that the administrative wing of the court registers the petitions despite non-compliance with certain norms and place them before the courts as per the procedure.
However, the courts are not precluded from passing orders for complying with any of the specific norms depending upon the requirement to effectively hear the petitions, the Bench clarified while giving an illustration that if a judge is not conversant with Kannada then the court can pass order for production of translated copy in English as per the norms.
