NEW DELHI: A spooky surge in Covid cases among
Supreme Court employees forced the
Judges on Monday to suspend hearing of cases from
courtrooms and retreat into the residences from where they conducted virtual hearing of cases.
More than 45% of 97 employees, who took the RT-PCR test on Saturday, were reported positive for Coronavirus infection,
SC sources said. This set off the alarm bells and CJI S A Bobde, CJI-designate Justice N V Ramana and other Judges decided to suspend physical presence of Judges in the courtrooms of SC. All Judges joined the benches through video-conferencing for virtual hearing of cases.
During the virtual court proceedings, Justice Surya Kant spelled out the distressing situation. "More than 45% of the court staff tested positive (during the last testing day). My law clerks and support staff are all down with Covid. It is very difficult to get the files and prepare for hearing," he said.
The recent surge in cases has put paid to all hopes for commencement of physical hearing in the SC, a demand vociferously made by SC Bar Association from January onwards and which had forced the SC to commence hybrid hearing, a mix of virtual and physical. The SC will soon suspend the option of physical hearing for lawyers even for old admitted matters listed from Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of each week.
Had the SC agreed for commencing physical hearing, like Delhi High Court did from March 15, it would have become a fertile ground for infection given the crowd of lawyers that operate in court and its corridors, especially on Mondays and Fridays, when the SC takes up fresh matters. After the unprecedented rise in the number of Covid patients in Delhi, the Delhi HC too suspended physical hearing within weeks of commencing. Few of the HC Judges too got infected allowing others to surmise that it could be because of physical hearing.
The virtual hearing in the SC, which is now operational for more than a year and yet not glitch-free, could get better with the e-Committee headed by Justice D Y Chandrachud purchasing 1,600 more video-links with sufficient bandwidth to accommodate maximum number of advocates for each virtual court.
"There will be more than 100 video links available per court. If the lawyers leave their links as soon as their matter gets over, the system will operate much faster, clearer and without glitches," e-Committee sources told TOI.
Cautiousness of the SC in taking urgent precautionary measures - asking Judges to operate from home for virtual courts; testing its employees; and regularly sanitizing the court premises and office spaces is understandable as last year its Judges and staff had suffered badly at the hands of the pandemic. During the pandemic, the coronavirus had infected six Judges and almost 50% of the 2,200 employees of the SC in phases last year.