Cyber Law: Legal Recognition of Electronic Records

The Indian government has developed and implemented the Information Technology (IT) Act, which addresses the issues of cyber transactions and cyber crimes in India. The cyber activities pertaining to e-commerce and e-governance in India are also governed by the cyber laws that are enacted by the government of India.

Cyber Law: Legal Requirement for Written Format

Due to the tremendous growth of Internet services, more than 90 percent of the records created at present are in electronic form. However, cyber laws across the world did not recognize electronic communication as legally valid. The two main legal barriers of e-commerce and e-governance were:

• Necessity to record information on tangible medium.
• Requirement of hand written signatures.

However, Section 4, of the IT Act provides that, if there is a legal requirement for any information to be in written from, such a requirement shall be considered to be satisfied, in case where the information is:

• Made available in an electronic form; and
• Accessible for subsequent uses.

Cyber Law: Absence of Legal Recognition of Electronic Records in Some Cases

Some documents in electronic form are not considered to be legally valid under Indian cyber laws. These include:

• In case of a will.
• In case of a negotiable instrument.
• Trusts and powers of attorney (excluding constructive and resulting trusts).
• In case of contract pertaining to immovable property.
• In case of documents of title.
• Any other document issued by the Central Government.

Indian laws require these above mentioned documents to be legally valid only when they are in written form.