Whether Supreme Court and High Courts should make it mandatory to file mobile numbers and emails addresses of Litigants in each case?
Supreme Court already has a filing form which requires mobile number and email address of client. But these fields are optional, not compulsory, so mostly these are kept blank.
Here, I am trying to make out a case to make it compulsory to give these details by giving two examples.
1) In 1997, a brief Advocate came to give me a Criminal Appeal. He said his client was very very poor labourer and asked me to accept his case for Rs.10,000/-. I accepted it. Later I learned that he had extorted Rs.1,10,000/- in my name. He never allowed me to contact client. He never gave client my number.
2) Two years ago, a briefing advocate gave me a Land case and said his client has so much spent in High Court and Trial Court that he has now no capacity to spend in Supreme Court. He asked me to accept his case for Rs.50,000/- only. He also never allowed client to contact me, not gave me access to client. Somedays ago this case was over after a prolonged battle. The client managed to contact me. He expressed his gratitude and mentioned that briefing Advocate had taken Rs.7,00,000/- for this case in my name and was demanding still more, so he found out my contact and reached me.
Between 1997 to 2017, there are hundreds and thousands of such stories.
I have no complaints or grievances about this. But I therefore think that disclosure of full contact details of clients must be made mandatory to be filed in every court.
In fact, in April 2017, in video conference case, SC has requested all High Court to set up one email id and one phone number in each District Court where Litigants can make inquiries about cases. Each Court is required assign a person duty to give suitable replies to emails of Litigants.
I think, the Courts are in process of reforming the system.
Haresh Raichura 9/9/2017
