The legal community in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry is gearing up for a major confrontation with the judiciary over the digital transition of court procedures. The Joint Action Committee (JAC) of various advocates' associations has called for a massive protest, planning to lay siege to the Madras High Court on January 7, 2026. This decisive action comes as a response to the mandatory implementation of electronic filing (e-filing) in all subordinate courts, which lawyers argue has been rolled out without ensuring adequate infrastructure.
The Core of the Controversy: Infrastructure vs. Digitization
The conflict stems from a circular issued by the Madras High Court that made e-filing compulsory from December 1. However, advocates across the state have expressed strong opposition, not to the concept of digitization itself, but to its premature enforcement. At a coordination committee meeting held in Madurai on December 22, the JAC formally adopted resolutions demanding the withdrawal of this mandate until basic facilities in all courts are significantly improved.
Senior advocate S Prabakaran, who serves as the president of the Tamil Nadu Advocates Association (TNAA), clarified the stance. He stated that the legal fraternity is not inherently against the e-filing system. Their primary demand is to maintain a dual system, allowing both electronic and physical filing of documents by advocates and litigants until the infrastructure gap is bridged.
Escalating Agitation and Financial Hurdles
As a mark of protest, an indefinite boycott of court work has already been in effect since December 5. The planned gherao (siege) on January 7, 2026, represents the next, more intense phase of this agitation, where lawyers will be mobilized in large numbers to surround the High Court premises.
Adding to the protest, the JAC has also announced a boycott of the e-filing training programs scheduled to be conducted via video conferencing on December 29, 30, 31, and January 2, 2026. Advocates highlight practical and financial obstacles as key reasons for their resistance. Advocate T Arun Kumar explained that e-filing requires documents to be submitted in OCR (Optical Character Recognition) format.
This necessity creates a substantial financial burden, as a special OCR scanner costs approximately Rs 40,000, an amount not every lawyer can afford. Outsourcing the scanning to a computer centre is also costly, with charges of around Rs 10 per page, plus additional service and internet fees, ultimately increasing the overall cost of litigation for clients.
Operational Challenges and the Way Forward
Beyond cost, advocates point to severe operational issues plaguing the new system. They report that court staff tasked with handling e-filing are often undertrained, and frequent server malfunctions have become a major obstacle to smooth and reliable filing. Ironically, despite the push for digitization, lawyers note that the courts continue to insist on the submission of physical copies of all case documents, rendering the e-filing process duplicative and inefficient in its current form.
The protest underscores a critical debate in India's judicial modernization: the pace of technological adoption must be matched by ground-level preparedness. The lawyers' action on January 7, 2026, will be a significant test of whether their concerns about court infrastructure and accessibility will lead to a policy revision from the Madras High Court administration.
