Bhopal: Supreme Court seeks Solicitor General response on mandatory e-filing In DRTs, DRATs

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The Supreme Court, on Thursday, asked Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta for his response on the petition challenging complete ban on physical filing and e-filings being made mandatory in Debt Recovery Tribunals (DRTs) and Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunals (DRATs) across the country.

Madhya Pradesh High Court Bar Association challenged stating the validity and constitutionality of the DRT Filing Rules 2020, as amended on January 31, 2023. Through the amendment, overnight, physical filings have been completely proscribed and the rule after amendment says that only e-filings ‘shall be taken on record’.

Owing to complete ban on physical filings, lawyers and litigants are both facing huge difficulties in uploading and e-filing of their matter before the DRT, with the server and website of DRTs and DRATs stated to be not supportive of excessive traffic on their portals.

Advocates Siddharth R Gupta, who appeared on behalf of MP HC Bar Association, argued that the amendment to the e-filing rules by the government of India is arbitrary and violative of Article 14, 19, 21 as also 38 and 39A of the Constitution of India.’

The petition has pleaded that such a rule was introduced overnight without consultation or deliberation with the actual stakeholders of the justice dispensation system, i.e. lawyers and the litigants runs contrary to constitutional tenets of fairness, reasonableness and non-arbitrariness. Such a rule cannot be allowed to be sustained, being contrary to settled law laid down by the Supreme Court, advocate Gupta added.