Plea filed in SC against resuming physical courts in Delhi

Four lawyers have filed a plea in the Supreme Court, challenging the Delhi High Court's January 14 notification for allowing physical courts in subordinate courts as well as the high court, without giving an option to advocate to appear via virtual mode in disregard to health concern due to Covid-19 situation.

The notification for physical courts roster in HC and such sitting on the alternate date in district courts from January 18 without proper medical advice was against the interest and safety of the public and society at large, as the intermingling of an alarmingly increased number of advocates, clerks, court staff, and litigants posed an increased risk of the spread of the infection and fatalities, the plea said.

Advocates Kartik Nayar, Nancy Roy, Sachit Jolly, Amit Bhagat asked the top court to set aside the HC's order and allow the advocates to choose and accordingly appear through the virtual mode of hearing.

They said, "The high court has miserably failed to consider that it is nearly impossible to follow protocol and the SOPs in the subordinate courts wherein the courtrooms are too congested and function without having any glass shields or panels to separate the judges and the advocates."

If the subordinate courts would resume physical hearings at full force, the congregation would result in extremely high fatalities and cases and would potentially jeopardize the lives of many, they feared. They pointed out the Rajasthan and Madras High Courts have had to quickly shut down the functioning of the courts after prematurely resuming the physical hearings.

"Making physical courts mandatory and compelling advocates, court staff, support staff, litigants and other non-legal personnel to appear in person, without proper vaccinations for Covid-19 for the time, being is arbitrary direction, and ex-facie violative of Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution," their plea said.

The notification was fundamentally erroneous as it would cause extreme inconvenience and chaos for the practising advocates as it would become infeasible for the advocate to attend both virtual and physical hearings on the same day, it added.