By Radhika M
Introduction
There is a lot of paperwork involved with every official matter. It may be prescribed forms, notices, proofs, copies of original documents and this list is never exhausting. Even though these documents remain as a proof for the matter done, in the long run they don’t serve any purpose.
They consume space and time in maintaining them. So documents which are not important and too old are disposed by the concerned departments. Every department or the concerned Government as the case may be, has its own rules regarding the procedure to be followed while destructing official records.
The Destruction of Records Act, 1917 deals with the destruction and disposal of certain documents in possession of courts or Revenue officers or other public officers.
The Act confers rule making power to certain authorities for the disposal of records which in their opinion doesn’t have sufficient public value to justify their preservation. The High Courts are empowered to frame rules regarding the disposal of documents which are in the custody of High Court itself and any Court subordinate to it.
And Supreme Court of India like any other system, has its own rules for the destruction of records and documents.
Order LVI of the Supreme Court Rules, 2013 deals with the procedure regarding destruction of records. The Order gives the direction as to the destruction and preservation of the records involved in the proceedings before the Supreme Court.
Index
First of all, there shall be an index of records in every case. This index shall include the details of the documents filed in relation to the suit, it’s date of filing, the part to which it belongs etc.
The documents should be enumerated and kept in the prescribed format.
Part
For convenience the documents are divided in to two categories.
The first part i.e, Part I consists of the documents:
- Index.
- Judgment.
- Decree or Order.
- Pleadings (Plaint, written statement, set off and counter claim).
- Petition of appeal, reply in petition of appeal and rejoinder to the reply, with such annexures as are original documents.
- Statement of Case.
- Original petitions including admitted Special Leave Petitions and Article 32 petitions, objection/reply to the notice and rejoinder to the reply, with such annexures as are original documents.
- Reference received under article 143.
- Reference received under article 3I7(1) or under any statute.
- Memorandum of compromise, award of arbitrators, which results in a decree.
- Original documents. ,
- Papers of historical, sociological, scientific or archival value and such other papers, as in the opinion of the Court or the Registrar should be permanently preserved.
- Served summons and notices.
- Acknowledgment(s) of receipt of summons and notices by the respondent(s).
- Affidavit of service.
- Any other document evidencing the service of summons and notices on the respondent(s).
The second part i.e, Part II includes the documents of:
- Appearance, power of attorney and Vakalatnama.
- Affidavits.
- Taxation files including bills of costs.
- Register of bills of costs.
- Despatch register.
- Applications for condonation of delay and such other formal applications.
- Correspondence in cases.
- Unclaimed documents other than original documents.
- Office notes in the case files.
- Copies of unserved summons and notices.
- Copying register.
- Surplus copies of printed records, and of pleading and petitions.
- Minutes Book of the Judge to be destroyed by burning on the laying down of office by the Judge unless the Judge desires to retain them in his personal custody.
As per Order LVI of Supreme Court Rules, 2013 Part I documents shall be preserved permanently in physical, digitized, scanned, microfilmed or such other form as may be decided by the Chief Justice of India and Part Il to be preserved for one year.
In addition to these documents, there is provision for preservation of Registers.
Registers of:
- Suits, Civil and Criminal appeals, petitions under article 32, special leave petitions, special references and miscellaneous petitions.
- Rolls of Advocates and enrolment files.
Power of Registrar to categorise documents
As per Rule 6 of the Order ,Registrar has the power to transfer any document which fall under the category of Part II to Part I. He may direct that such documents shall be preserved permanently.
And under Rule 7 of the Order, if there is any document which doesn’t fall under either of the categories, the matter shall be referred to Registrar. He shall decide the category of such documents.
Period of preservation
As mentioned earlier, the documents which fall under Part I should be preserved permanently. And as for Part II documents, they should be preserved for one year.
When a document is received by the department, the category to which it belongs should be written on the top right corner of the first page of the document. Every document as and when it is filed in the record shall be numbered and entered in the in the index.
The period for preservation shall be calculated from the date of final decree or order in the proceedings involved.
If there is a review application, the period shall be calculated from the date of final decree or order made on review. In the case of Registers, the period shall run from the date of last entry made in the Register.
All papers which forms the part of admission matters including petitions for preliminary hearing, objections, rejoinder etc may not be kept in the Registry for more than one year.
Only the index of documents, original documents and order of disposal of the suit may be preserved permanently.
Destruction of Records
When the period of preservation is over, the documents can be destructed. As per Rule 8 documents may be shredded and the shredded pieces may be disposed as waste. The waste may be sold and the sale proceeds shall be credited to the Central Government.
After the record is destroyed , the details shall be entered in the index. It must be shown in the index that the document has been destroyed and the date of the destruction should be specified.
Conclusion
It is impossible to keep all the documents in physical form in any department. The storage and maintenance of such records is burdensome as well as time consuming. It is difficult to make space for all the documents involved in a particular proceeding/issue.
Even though we have digitized format for everything nowadays, it has not completely replaced the paperwork. Such documents after they have served their purpose, needs to be disposed effectively and the Supreme Court Rules.
Reference
- Disposal of Public Records Act,1917
- Supreme Court Rules, 2013