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SC Rejects Plea for Evening Courts and Virtual Hearing Facilities
In a recent development, the Supreme Court on Friday of the week ruled against a plea to make virtual hearing or video conference facilities across all the district courts in the country.
In the matter ofIndexed ‘Sai Industries Ltd v Uoi’, a Bench of CJI DY Chandrachud, and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra noted that the country is too large and cannot give such directions through judicial orders.
The Court added such issues are being addressed as the project continues under the e-Courts initiative.
“How many district courts are there in the country? It cannot be blanket solutions demographically We cannot afford to set such directions The country is too vast and diverse The present issues are being addressed in phase 3 of e-Courts and an ongoing project of technological modernisation But there cannot be judicial directions on them,” the Court said.
The petitioner’s counsel moved for the plea insisting that virtual hearing facilities would assist in the laying of evidence and witnesses.
But the Court steeped that there cannot be PIL for all such demands are not possible.
Besides, it stated that the High Courts will have to be relied on their discretion to deal with the funds provided for the development of technical facilities based on the prevailing challenges in each State.
CJI said, ‘90 to 95 percent of funds was spent by High Courts in the first month. Meghalaya High Court has a problem of finding the vendors whereas the problem that Bombay High Court has is different. All issues are different. High Courts have strong ICT committees and we need to rely on them.”
The plea had also sought establishing of evening courts. Speaking for the lawyers, CJI Chandrachud said that such a move would not be acceptable since they have a lot of work handling as it is.
They have petitioned for evening courts ‘the lawyers will not agree’ He said, ‘supposing we give this direction…they will find grounds, after a regular day at work, to argue about evening courts’.
The court then went on to discharge the plea.
