ORAL ORDER

(PER : HONOURABLE MR. JUSTICE J.B.PARDIWALA)

1. By this writ application under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, the writ applicant, a law student, has prayed for the following reliefs:

“(A) Your Lordship may be pleased to admit and allow this writ petition.

(B) Your Lordship may be pleased to issue a writ, order or direction in the nature of mandamus, directing the use of A-4 Size paper, with printing on both sides of the paper , instead of legal size paper with one side printing, for all the pleadings, petitions, affidavits or other documents to be filed in this Hon'ble Court and all subordinate courts, tribunals etc. in the State of Gujarat with a view to bring uniformity about the use of paper and printing thereon and to minimize consumption of paper, including the costs of the proceedings and consequently to save the environment.

(C ) Your Lordship may be pleased to issue a writ, order or direction, directing the Registrar of this Hon'ble Court, if necessary, to make suitable amendments in the Gujarat High Court Rules, 1993 so as to give effect to the directions for the use of A-4 size paper, with printing both the sides of the paper, for all the pleadings, petitions, affidavits or other documents to be filed in this Hon'ble Court.

INTERIM RELIEF (D) Your Lordship may be pleased to issue a writ, order or direction in the nature of mandamus directing the use of A-4 size paper, with printing on both sides of the paper, instead of legal-size paper with one side printing, for all the pleadings, petitions, affidavits or other documents to be filed in this Hon'ble Court and all subordinate courts, tribunals, etc. in the State of Gujarat with a view to bring uniformity about use of paper and printing thereon and to minimize consumption of paper till the disposal of this public interest litigation.

(E) Grant any other relief or pass any other order, which the Honourable Court may consider just and proper in the facts and circumstances of the case and in the interest of justice.

(F) Your Lordship may be pleased to award the costs of the writ petition.”

2. The case put up by the writ applicant, in his own words, as pleaded in the memorandum of his writ application, reads thus:

“4.1 That, in the Gujarat High Court and subordinate Courts, Tribunals, of the State of Gujarat Enormous Number of cases are filed on a daily basis and the filing are accepted on foolscap paper (hereinafter refer to as Legal Size Paper) with one side print, which greatly contributes to creation of a storage crisis and insurmountable wastage of paper, thereby causing great damage to the environment. Inter alia it is the common fact that this Hon'ble High Court and his subordinate Court also faces a huge storage of crunch as to the keeping of the records and files of the matter before it.

4.2 That, it goes without saying, that “Legal Size Paper”

(as it is commonly known), the usage of which is prevalent in this Hon'ble Court and in subordinate judgeships, is thicker and requires more pulp to prepare, as compared to A4 sheets, and is more damaging to the environment. It is pertinent to mention, that ISO 16 is the International Standard for paper sizes, having A4 size paper as the most commonly used paper worldwide, the legal-size paper is more of a relic and legacy of the colonial era, and has been junked out of usage in most parts of the world. Notably, all the courts in the United Kingdom (U.K.) and in the United States (U.S.), including the Supreme Courts of U.K and U.S., Mandate the use of A-$ Size paper for all petitions and other purposes.

4.3 That, further the legal-size paper is far more expensive to use and difficult to procure as compare to A4 size paper, and not all printers are compatible with the legal size paper, although in other hand, A4 size printing is the by default setting and computability in most of the printers in India and around the world. As a matter of fact, the cost of a legal size (FS) bundle costs of (500 sheets) somewhere a