diff --git a/catalogue/itemsearch.pl b/catalogue/itemsearch.pl
index ee8ca66186..c48f2f1aba 100755
--- a/catalogue/itemsearch.pl
+++ b/catalogue/itemsearch.pl
@@ -253,6 +253,7 @@ if (scalar keys %params > 0) {
             print "$line\n" unless $line =~ m|^\s*$|;
         }
     } elsif ($format eq 'json') {
+        $template->param(sEcho => scalar $cgi->param('sEcho'));
         output_with_http_headers $cgi, $cookie, $template->output, 'json';
     }
 
diff --git a/koha-tmpl/intranet-tmpl/prog/en/modules/catalogue/itemsearch_json.tt b/koha-tmpl/intranet-tmpl/prog/en/modules/catalogue/itemsearch_json.tt
index 35e020f8b1..4bc2add569 100644
--- a/koha-tmpl/intranet-tmpl/prog/en/modules/catalogue/itemsearch_json.tt
+++ b/koha-tmpl/intranet-tmpl/prog/en/modules/catalogue/itemsearch_json.tt
@@ -1,6 +1,5 @@
-[%- USE CGI -%]
 {
-  "sEcho": [% CGI.param('sEcho') %],
+  "sEcho": [% sEcho %],
   "iTotalRecords": [% total_rows %],
   "iTotalDisplayRecords": [% total_rows %],
   "aaData": [