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Chennai: Opposing the introduction of mandatory e-filing system in all subordinate courts across the state, Joint Action Committee (JAC) of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry Advocates’ Associations has announced plans to lay siege to Madras high court on Jan 7. The decision was taken at a coordination committee meeting held on Monday in Madurai. According to the resolutions adopted, the advocates reiterated their demand that the circular issued by Madras high court making e-filing compulsory from Dec 1, should be withdrawn until basic infrastructure in all courts is improved. S Prabakaran, senior advocate and president of TN Advocates Association, said the legal fraternity was not against the e-filing system, just that physical filing of cases by advocates and litigants should also be permitted. JAC noted that court work is being boycotted since Dec 5 to press these demands. As the next phase of agitation, the committee has decided to mobilise advocates in large numbers and lay siege to HC.The committee has also announced a boycott of e-filing training programmes to be conducted through video conferencing in the coming days. Explaining the issue, advocate T Arun Kumar said, “The e-filing must be done in the OCR (optical character recognition) format, which requires a special OCR scanner that costs around 40,000. Not every advocate can afford this.”“If we do this in a computer centre, they charge 10 a page in addition to service and internet charges. This will add to the litigation cost. Also, the staff handling e-filing are under-trained, and the frequent malfunctioning of the server has become a huge obstacle in the process,” he added.
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