Kriti Agrawal
On Monday, India’s newly appointed Chief Justice N.V. Ramana granted the Supreme Court Bar Association’s request to turn a newly built chamber block building into a temporary Covid care center.
CJI Ramana made the decision during a meeting with senior officers of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), including president Vikas Singh, chairman of the Bar Council of India (BCI), Manan Kumar Mishra, and president of the Supreme Court Advocate on Record Association (SCORA), Shivaji Jadhav.
Following a thorough discussion, the SCBA was asked to prepare a blueprint for the facility’s logistics how the center will be built, who will operate it, and what precautions will be in place to ensure that biomedical waste disposal is carried out in accordance with standards. The CJI requested that SCBA send the blueprint as soon as possible.
According to SCBA secretary Aredhendumauli Prasad, the meeting was called after Singh wrote a letter to the CJI shortly after being sworn in on Saturday.
The SCBA president proposed in the letter that the chamber block on the top court’s grounds be converted into a makeshift Covid treatment center for Supreme Court advocates, employees, and their families.
The newly built chamber block building has 200 rooms and a hall with about 60 beds. The building has been emptied since its completion in July 2019, and the chambers are yet to be assigned to advocates.
Singh told the Print that the SCBA had discussed the proposal with the Delhi government before taking it to CJI Ramana’s attention.
Singh said, “We will now coordinate with the Delhi government, which will inspect the building to prepare a plan and determine how many beds to set up in the new building.”
There will also be a testing facility and a vaccine center at the makeshift center.
Meanwhile, CJI Ramana deliberated on probably advancing the Supreme Court’s summer vacation by one week due to the Covid situation in the national capital. The CJI, on the other hand, stated that the matter would be decided by a full court.