The Supreme Court has instituted a system through which advocates and the public can file cases before the Supreme Court electronically. The launching of the e-filing system to make the Supreme Court easily accessible to the public is most welcome.
But due to improper design of the e-filing system, it is extremely difficult to use. We have been trying to e-file two appeals against orders of the National Consumer Commission for the last seven months. Every time we e-file our appeals, the assistant registrar of the Supreme Court points out the defects in them, we correct the defects and e-file once again. We have gone through three revisions, but we still have not been able to get them approved.
Based on our experience with the Supreme Court e-filing system, we wish to bring some major problems in the system to your attention and suggest some solutions. It is our belief that by removing these deficiencies in the implementation of the e-filing system, it can be made more accessible to the public. It will also reduce the load on the registrar's office. The good idea of e-filing can be made more useful by proper software implementation.
PROBLEM 1. The sign-up process seems to work only with the Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) web browser. It definitely does not work with Firefox (or Iceweasel) web browser which innumerable people use. The characters in the left window of the User Registration form is completely garbled up in the Firefox browser and so one can not even complete the sign-up process. Many people may not realize that this is a browser-related problem and may give up on e-filing.
Once a person has signed up for e-filing (using IE web browser), he/she can log in even from Firefox (or Iceweasel) web browser. But uploading the petition copy is still difficult. It is our repeated experience that all the files are not transmitted.
SUGGESTION: The e-filing process should be made browser-independent. The public of India should not be forced to buy the proprietary and expensive software of Microsoft Company to make use of e-filing facility. The Supreme Court should encourage non-proprietary and free software such as Linux (and web browsers such as Firefox and Iceweasel which work with Linux), especially in a poor country like India. Incidentally, at the meetings of ISO (International Organization for Standards), India has consistently voted for Open Document Format (which can be accessed by non-Microsoft software also) and against accepting the Microsoft internet format as the international standard.
PROBLEM 2. The filing fee and the printing charges are now collected at the time of initial filing. Every time the registrar's office points out any defects, the defects will have to be rectified and the corresponding pages re-uploaded. Printing charges have to be paid for the re-uploaded pages. Very often, even a small correction on one page changes the page numbering and so all the succeeding pages have to be uploaded at great expense even though there are no corrections (except page numbering) on them. This causes needless expenditure to the petitioner.
SUGGESTION: The printing charges should be collected only when the e-filed petition gets the approval of the registrar.
PROBLEM 3. During user sign-up, the screen asks for a hint question for the password and the sign-up can not be completed unless the hint question is given. But, in the login screen, there is no help for remembering a forgotten password. If one forgets his/her password, there is no way of recovering it. So e-filing can not be accessed and the money and effort till then will be wasted.
SUGGESTION: The login screen should be redesigned to help people who have forgotten their passwords.
PROBLEM 4. Our petition copied the format of the paperbook of an SLP admitted by the Supreme Court in 2003. But the guidelines for SLPs must have changed since 2003 because our petition has been found defective not once, but three times, even after revisions. For people who do not have the advantage of possessing an SLP, it must be much more difficult. The instructions on the Supreme Court website on how to file an SLP are not at all adequate.
SUGGESTION: A complete model SLP with all the supporting applications (such as application for exemption from filing certified copies of lower court orders, application for condonation of delay, etc.), affidavits, certificates, etc., composed with the correct font with the correct margins etc. should be available to the public on the Supreme Court website. It can be uploaded in Open Document Format so that it can be opened even with non-Microsoft software. The user can open this document and change the names of the petitioner and the respondents and edit the rest to his/her requirement. Since the user will be using a standard template for the SLP, the defects in the petition will be minimum and so the load on the registrar's office will be greatly reduced. Similar templates for all types of petitions that can be filed before the Supreme Court can be prepared and uploaded on the Supreme Court website.
Maj.Gen.(Rtd.) S.G. Vombatkere, President, Mysore Grahakara Parishat
Maj.Gen.(Rtd.) S.G. Vombatkere, President, Mysore Grahakara Parishat