On 12 January 2021, the Supreme Court of India took up the petition filed by Dr. Nilakshi Choudhury, Advocate, Supreme Court, on behalf of the aggrieved advocates and public at large for the reopening of all courts in the country including the Supreme Court of India.

A three judge bench headed by the CJI S.A. Bobde, observed that the decision to convene Court proceedings via video conferencing is taken after extensive deliberations with medical experts.

The Petitioner-in-Person pleaded that advocates and their staff are not able to pay their rent and are unable to maintain their livelihood. Also, hearing through Video conferencing is a violation to Article 145(4) that clearly states, “No Judgement shall be delivered by the Supreme Court save in open court and no report shall be made under Article 143 save accordance with an opinion also delivered in open court”.

The petitioner also quoted the judgement Naresh Shridhar Mirajkar and Ors vs. State of Maharashtra and Anr., 1966, which states that

“When the public is excluded from the audience that the privilege of publication also goes because the public outside then have no right to obtain at second-hand what they cannot obtain in the court itself”.

The bench stated that, “The court is following medical protocol instead of the Constitution of India during this Pandemic and we have been following this (VC hearing) over one year due to medical reasons…We are reviewing the situation. The decisions are taken on the basis of reports of medical experts ”.

Later on when the question of the welfare of the aggrieved advocates was raised the CJI said, “This is what best we can do. The Solicitor General has been directed to convene a meeting with BCI and extend help of Rs. 3-4 Lakhs interest free loan for aggrieved Lawyers”.

Along with this plea, a representation was submitted to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) by the Supreme Court lawyers on the same day requesting resumption of the physical functioning of the Supreme Court.

The representation is signed by 505 lawyers, including Senior Advocates, underscoring that members of the Bar, especially young practitioners, have been going through a difficult time in the last 10 months between the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent virtual functioning of the Supreme Court.

As such the Supreme Court has been functioning in virtual mode since March last year with the onset of COVID-19. Few courts such as Delhi High Court, Bombay High Court have started partial Physical Hearing and recently Punjab & Haryana Court, Madras High Court has already given orders to their Subordinate courts to resume physical hearing.

 

Comments

  1. Randomly Organized Thoughts15 January 2021 at 01:45

    This is great news. Atleast the lawyers now have something to look upto.

    ReplyDelete
  2. sharad18 January 2021 at 01:00

    Good Initiative and i think its received favorably by supreme court.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown18 June 2021 at 08:27

    Good Initiative


    Romesh Pratap Singh

    ReplyDelete

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