Kashish Jain
The Supreme Court has decided that all its judges would function from their respective homes and all the Benches will be assembled through video links. This decision came in light of the grim scenario, the Apex Court finds itself in after 50 percent of its staff tested positive
The entire Supreme Court premises including the Court Rooms are being sanitized and the Benches will assemble an hour later than the scheduled time either.
Before this, the many benches were led by CJI S A Bobde and Justices N V Ramana, R F Nariman, U U Lalit, A M Khanwilkar, Ashok Bhushan, L N Rao, S A Nazir, Navin Sinha were assembling in the courtrooms.
With the Covid positive cases among staff and their family members surging to an alarming level, the CJI and Judges decided that utmost precaution was required to be taken to prevent further contamination and avoid the situation the Court found itself in last year when as many as 6 Supreme Court judges were infected with Corona Virus.
By virtue of adequate precautions taken since then, the number of cases had plummeted considerably. The SC E-Committee has purchased no less than 1,600 video links to hear cases vide video conferencing, there is adequate bandwidth available with the SC to hear the cases uninterrupted.
The New president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, senior advocate Vikas Singh, had been pressing the CJI and other Judges for resuming a complete physical hearing in the SC no less than a month back.
Had the SC adhered to this, the Courts would have become a fecund field for the spread of the disease attributed to the huge crowd of lawyers that gather with litigants from across the Country.
The Delhi High Court that had been bold enough to open up the bounds of the Court, has now shut its doors for lawyers to revert to the virtual format of hearing given the recent surge.