Lawyers practising in the High Court and the judicial officers associated with it are in jitters after suspension of the court proceedings till Sunday fearing 'COVID-19 outbreak'.
All the High Court judges, even those who are out of station (in Hyderabad) have been asked to undergo COVID-19 test. Tests were conducted for all judicial staff in front of the High Court premises on Friday.
According to sources, death of High Court Registrar General B. Rajasekhar was the trigger for rumours of COVID-19 outbreak on the court premises.
While 'cardiac arrest' was said to be the reason for the death of the Registrar General, his relatives have confirmed that he was found to be COVID positive. “We went to attend his last rites, but the authorities did not hand over the body because his blood sample taken after he was admitted to a private hospital here was found to be positive,” said a relative.
A lawyer of the High Court said, on the condition of anonymity, that when compared to the Telangana High Court, the AP counterpart was lagging in safety precautions.
Social distancing was a casualty during the swearing-in of the judges that were recently appointed. Several VIPs and the families of the Judges being sworn in were allowed to attend the function and social distancing went for a toss.
In Telangana, not more than a handful of judges were allowed in the hall where the swearing-in took place and the others were allowed to witness the event online.
A member of the High Court lawyers' community said that the Telangana High Court was using teleconferencing extensively. All the judges worked through the summer holidays from home. In AP, however, a rotation system in which only 50% of the judges attend court, is in place.
Logistics support
Since the Telangana Judges have access to all scanned documents they are doubly protected. The logistics support needed for digitisation and scanning of documents was being extended to the Telangana High Court by the Andhra Pradesh Judicial Academy (which is still in Hyderabad), they said.
“People go to the residence of the judges to merely deliver a flash drive and all dictations are made to the stenos over telephone,” said the lawyers.
The High Court lawyers feel that AP should follow the model of its Telangana counterpart.
The lawyers said unless the Andhra Pradesh government extended the logistic support in terms of equipment and connectivity, the litigant public would suffer.