Bombay High Court said it would take a decision this week on whether to use a hybrid system
The Bombay High Court today said it would take a decision within this week on whether to use a hybrid system (online and physical) of hearing matters in view of the surge in COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra.
Earlier this month, the Nagpur and Aurangabad benches of high court reverted to video conference (VC) hearing of cases owing to the rise in COVID-19 cases.
The Bombay bench of high court is, however, hearing matters physically.
On Tuesday, senior advocate Vikram Nankani, while mentioning the petition filed by former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh against Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh, told a division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice GS Kulkarni that senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi would appear for Mr Singh if the option of video conference hearing was available.
To this, Chief Justice Datta said while the court has received recommendations for adopting the hybrid system of hearings, no decision has been taken yet.
Chief Justice Datta said an internal meeting with the administrative committee of the High Court would be held this week and a decision would be taken based on what the experts suggest.
The Bombay Bar Association had last week sent a representation to Chief Justice Datta requesting for hearings to be conducted via video conference or a combination of physical and online methods so that those lawyers who do not wish to travel can appear before the court online.
On Monday, the high court issued a circular restricting the official timings for all subordinate courts in Maharashtra.
As per the circular, all subordinate courts will function from 11am to 1.30pm and 2pm to 4:30 pm.
Last week, Justice Gautam Patel issued a notice saying lawyers and all parties with cases listed in his court could choose to attend hearing through video conferencing interface
After the nationwide lockdown imposed in March last year, all benches of Bombay high court had stopped physical hearings, and were conducting hearings for urgent cases through video conferencing.
However, in December last year, the principal bench at Bombay resumed physical hearings for all cases on four out of the five working days of a week.
On Fridays, a few designated courts hear such matters through video conference where the lawyers or parties are not based in Mumbai.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)