Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 26

As Covid-19 exposes a digital divide in the legal profession, Chief Justice of India NV Ramana has requested the Centre to ask telecom companies to provide uninterrupted internet facilities to lawyers in remote areas to enable them address courts which have been functioning in virtual mode since March last year.

Highlighting that poor internet connectivity in rural, tribal, remote and hilly areas was adversely impacting the pace of justice delivery, the CJI on Saturday said, “A whole generation of lawyers is being pushed out of the system due to digital divide.”

Speaking at a virtual function to release a book, “Anomalies in Law and Justice”, authored by former Supreme Court Judge RV Raveendran, he said underlined the need to bridge the digital divide, saying, poor internet connectivity was depriving thousands of young lawyers across the country of their livelihood.

The CJI said he has written to IT and Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to address the problem.

Most of the two million lawyers in India practise in subordinate courts where uninterrupted internet connection needed to use the virtual court system is rarely available. Major bar bodies have been demanding resumption of physical court hearings, saying 95 per cent of lawyers were not comfortable with the virtual court system activated since March last year in view of the pandemic.

Bar Council of India – which regulates legal profession in the country – had earlier alleged that the legal profession was gradually being attempted to be hijacked by a few blessed lawyers and selected law firms having high level connections and if the virtual court system was allowed to continue, more than 95 per cent of advocates will become brief less.

During a panel discussion on the book, the CJI said the issue of poor digital connectivity figured prominently in the two-day conference of chief justices of high courts that he had held recently.

The CJI said he has also written to Prasad, who holds the Law and Justice portfolio as well—to evolve a mechanism to help advocates who lost their livelihood due to Covid-19 pandemic and were in dire need of financial assistance. He said legal professionals and associated functionaries should be declared as frontline workers and they should be vaccinated on a priority basis.

Speaking on the book, Justice Ramana said, “Through this book, Justice Raveendran undertakes to explain in simple terms, various deficiencies in the law which require to be overcome, so that common man does not lose faith in the judiciary and the legal system.”