Sreya Kanugula
Chief Justice of India SA Bobde stated that the Supreme Court could handle its own social media account on the platform of Twitter.
“The Supreme Court should have a Twitter handle of its own,” he remarked to his fellow judges comprising the bench, Justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian, on an unrelated note during the conduct of virtual proceedings of the court in a case.
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the United States of America maintain their own Twitter handles on an official basis as do several other court systems around the world.
These accounts end up posting very important information related to court proceedings and amass a count of tens and thousands of followers as well.
Though the Top Court of India doesn’t have their own official handle at present, they do have at least 3 handles that tweet alerts on a daily basis unofficially on Twitter.
Legal reports given by many standard newspapers are retweeted by one handle. Whereas another runs an account on the tag of being a self-professed fan of the Supreme Court. The third currently handles over 6 million followers from its accounts.
Another unofficial Twitter handle was also reported to tweet information regularly from the High Court of Delhi.
At the moment, no judicial court in India currently carries an official handle on Twitter. But if the Top Court took their decision to begin one, many others may make their own as well.
Several courts run on official websites that continue to be maintained by internal bureaucracy.
Unfortunately, they haven’t tapped into the instant power of social media yet to disseminate information on proceedings and announcements.
During one of the former CJIs YK Sabharwal’s tenure, the Supreme Court was part of the first few major institutions to start issuing releases on the major rulings given to the press, but this process had gone obsolete after a while.
Currently, a public relations officer issues clarifications on behalf of the court and deals with any controversial issues revolving around it.
A handle on Twitter, on the other hand, would bring an entirely different interactive engagement level of the judiciary with the general public.
It could quite easily force the judiciary to step inside real-time controversies in the world involving orders given on matters of judicial and administrative importance.
The rest of the globe might have had an easy transition into the digital era involving the constant usage of mobiles, laptops as well as cameras, but the Supreme Court of India had permitted for phones to be carried and internal reporting from courtrooms to journalists only a couple of years ago.
Currently, laptops remain restricted in the inside of courtrooms for any journalists. Despite the hastened switch to court proceedings via virtual means due to the COVID-19 situation, these hearings continue to remain inaccessible to the public.
Journalists were only allowed to watch held hearings from specific rooms allotted inside the court complex.
Mostly telecasted proceedings concerning high-profile cases took place through the efforts of other jurisdictions in order to make an effort to enforce accountability in the institutions.
Proceeding transcripts were made available on all of the hearings.