According to Article 192, every High Court shall be a court of record and shall have all powers of such court including the power to punish for contempt of itself. The High Court being a Court of Record simply means all the judgments made by this court shall be preserved for future references by its subordinate courts. Its decisions are admitted as evidence.
General rules to be followed –
Applications and petitions shall be written on watermarked plain paper (also known as water marked petition paper).
Official foolscap half sheet shall be used for English portion of the records and judicial forms. Standard petition paper shall be used for forms which are Vernacular. Writing orders on top and along the side of the page is forbidden. A sufficient margin is to be left on both sides in vernacular proceedings so that if the edges get destroyed the written matter is still legible.
All records are kept between stiff covers until they are transferred to the record room. This is done to prevent fraying and folding. Once transferred to the record room, they must be tied with tape or strings so that papers of different cases do get mixed.
English papers should be unfolded and tagged together with country papers. Exhibits should be folded and placed in envelopes.
Uniform foolscap size paper of good quality should be used for writing abstract of case, deposition of witness and judgment. In no situation, no other type of paper can be used.
Every page should be numbered in a consecutive order. Handwriting of records should be such that it can be easily read by others and not illegible.
Index – Each record should have an index in the prescribed format. The date of the document should be mentioned in the index along with the presiding officer. Enough details should be mentioned in the index so that the document can be easily identified. For example- if it is a deposition, mention the deponent name. The document should be divided into parts and each part should be named like ‘A’, ‘B’ and so on. When any paper is transferred from one part to another, it should be mentioned in remarks.
When a document is withdrawn from the record, it should be mentioned in columns or remarks whether a copy has been substituted or not.
Record Rooms – The record keeper will compare the index and the contents of the document to ensure that all the documents are present in the record. If he finds it complete, he will sign the certificate present at the bottom of the index and make an entry in the Register. If he finds that any document is missing, he will bring it in notice of the court.
Transfer of records– When the records are transferred from one place to another, a list has to be prepared of the documents to be transferred in addition to the above mentioned index. Such a list acts as evidence that the record is complete. The documents have to be transferred in the English docket which should specify the date of acquisition and number of cases except when documents are transferred by Tehsil.
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When the receiver receives the necessary record, it is his duty to check that the documents are complete as per the list and the index. He is supposed to sign the list if the contents are complete and send the list of documents received to the dispatching officer. When the documents are transferred from original court to appellate court and documents are in English and Urdu, both the transcripts should be sent separately.
Thus the High Court, being a court of record, has its own data of cases ranging from civil to criminal and that data is stored in a particular manner and this is known as Records. These records are very essential information and are to be dealt with very carefully by making indexes and lists while transferring. The importance of these records can be inferred from the complicated process involved in transferring such documents.
Though these documents can be accessed by the general public, there are a few limitations like court-fee, permission of higher authority, etc. These documents are destroyed by different procedures and the expiry date of such documents varies according to the type of document. Thus it can be concluded that these documents have a huge value on importance and have to be dealt with due care and caution.
