Journalism of Courage
Now,litigants can get court fee stamps at the click of a mouse. An initiative of Inspectorate General of Registration (IGR) department will help stakeholders get court fee stamps of an appropriate value online instead of going to stamp vendors for it. The Bombay High Court started the scheme on July 1 and the same will be followed in Pune district sessions court as well.
IGR Maharashtra S Chocklingam,who had helped draft the initial proposal of initiating the e-payment of the court fee stamp using virtual treasury,said it helps people in paying their court fee sitting at home without having to run to vendors who might run out of court fee stamps when needed. Its helping to make work easy and a challan or an e-receipt given as a printout will help individuals admit their case papers, said Chocklingam.
The service uses GRAS (government receipt accounting system),a web-based application developed by NIC Pune for finance department,which collects various government receipts for different departments. It was a long and tedious process and people were tired of the wait. This would help all.
A litigant or an advocate intending to file a case in the High Court or the district court can make the payment through GRAS using his net banking-enabled account with one of the registered banks in the system. On completion of the transaction,a hard copy of the e-challan needs to be printed and subsequently produced at the court filing counter along with the case documents. The court registry processes have been altered to include the processes for verifying the e-challan submitted and subsequent e-defacement of the transaction so that no duplicate usage happens.
After the Bombay High Court,the system would be replicated in all the courts. As of now,five banks Bank of Baroda,Bank of India,IDBI,IOB and Union Bank of India have been linked and other banks too are keen to tie-up for the processes. This will be an easy and effective initiative to carry out the processes in a simple manner, said Chocklingam.
It is a good initiative. We hope the same starts in all the courts across the state, said Menaka Joshi,an advocate in Pune.
