Four Madras high court judges test Covid +ve, curbs back in courts

CHENNAI: Four judges of the Madras high court have tested positive for Covid-19 and will be out of action for at least a couple of weeks. The court will go back to ‘restrictive hearing’ by limited benches strictly through videoconferencing.
After a lockdown of more than 40 days, the court had resumed full-fledged functioning from June 1 when it asked all 33 benches to be in court halls/chambers to conduct proceedings. Lawyers, however, were barred from entering courts and hearings were done through videoconferencing.
Now, only two division benches and four single judges will take up urgent matters. More importantly, the hearing would be conducted from the residential chambers of the judges and not from the high court premises. All access to the high court premises will be restricted till June 30. The restriction will also apply to subordinate courts across the state. At present, nine district courts were allowed to conduct limited open court hearings.
The decision to roll back the recent relaxations comes as a blow to advocates who were demanding complete resumption of open court hearings and access to their chambers in the court premises.
Though the high court began to function with its full strength from June 1, most of the members of the Bar were dissatisfied, as only limited cases were taken up for hearing, that too only through video conferencing. The lawyers were also denied entry to court premises, forcing them to attend hearings without access to their case briefs.
On June 1, after an urgent meeting with top Bar leaders, Bar council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry chairperson PS Amalraj said: “Almost 98% of the advocates are not comfortable with the virtual court hearings. The common feedback seems to be that the advocates are unable to present their cases effectively in the virtual courts and the same is acting as a major impediment for advocates to consent for such virtual hearings.”
Later, the council sent a representation to the Chief Justice AP Sahi suggesting open court hearing of only urgent motions in writs, appellate, original, and criminal side.