Munmun Kaur
Published On: January 18, 2022 at 15:46 IST
The Supreme Court has issued a notice regarding “Best practices for Virtual Court proceedings”, urging all the Advocates and party-in-person to join the Cisco Webex application for joining the court hearings through Desktops or Laptops with a stable internet connection, preferably wired, to avoid any disruption in the Court proceedings and inconvenience to the Judges.
The Advocates and parties have further been advised to join the VC hearing through a single device i.e. laptop or desktop and preferably use a headset enabled microphone and audio system.
The notice further read that all the background applications running in the device shall be closed for the best video conference experience.
This comes after Chief Justice of India NV Ramana, on January 17, expressed his unhappiness with the Advocates joining the Court hearings through their mobile phones as they were not audible or visible to the Bench in multiple cases.
CJI Ramana remarked, “These counsels appear through their mobile phones and they’re not visible. I think we have to ban this mobile business”. He further asked a lawyer, “What is the problem? You are now practicing in Supreme Court, every day you appear. You can’t afford to have a desktop at least?”
Amid the rising number of Covid-19 cases and the threat of Omicron variant, Supreme Court has reverted back to Virtual hearings for two weeks with effect from January 03, 2022. The Apex Court further decided to hear all the matters in virtual mode from January 07 with the Benches sitting at the Residential Offices, and taking up only urgent matters from January 10.