Madras High Court Chief Justice keeps mandatory e-filing requirement in abeyance

Madras High Court Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava on Tuesday ordered indefinite postponement of the mandatory requirement of filing cases only through the electronic mode in the district courts located both in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

An official notification issued by the High Court’s Registrar General S. Alli stated that the Chief Justice had issued directions to the Registry, on the administrative side of the court, to keep the mandatory e-filing requirement in abeyance until further orders.

Earlier, in the day, while hearing a public interest litigation petition filed by Madras High Court Advocates Association (MHAA), through its president G. Mohana Krishnan, the Chief Justice had said, the request of various Bar associations to postpone mandatory e-filing of cases was under consideration.

Presiding over the first Division Bench along with Justice G. Arul Murugan, the Chief Justice asked the lawyers to wait for some more time and simply adjourned to January 19 the PIL filed by MHAA for permitting manual filing of cases too along with the newly introduced e-filing system.

During arguments, senior counsel S. Prabakaran told the Bench that the lawyers practising in the district judiciary were facing enormous problems in filing cases through the electronic mode and hence the mandatory implementation of the new system could be postponed by a few more months.

He said, the Federation of Bar Associations of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (FBATNP) wanted manual as well as e-filing to be permitted in all the district courts until the difficulties faced by the lawyers in filing cases, through the electronic mode, could be resolved by making the process simpler and easier.

The High Court’s Registrar General had initially issued a notification on September 24, 2025 for implementing mandatory e-filing of cases in all district courts from October 8, 2025. However, acceding to a request from the Bar associations, the Chief Justice had postponed the date of implementation to December 1, 2025.

Claiming the problems in e-filing still persisted, the MHAA as well as FBATNP filed PILs for continuation of manual filing system too. Meanwhile, a joint action committee of FBATNP also decided to lay siege to the High Court campus on Wednesday by gathering advocates from all districts.