The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would decide about restarting physical courts after consulting medical experts while maintaining that the present advice was against it.
“We have been facing close down of courts for nearly a year. Present medical advice is that open court hearing would spread Covid," a bench presided over by Chief Justice S A Bobde said.
The bench, also comprising Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian said the Madras, Rajasthan, Delhi HCs began physical hearings, but closed down as lawyers didn't appear.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said one must remember that even during a pandemic, the court didn't deny access to justice. Since March 2020, the top court has been conducting hearings through video conferencing. It also passed a judicial order allowing the High Courts and district courts to conduct online hearings.
Hearing a batch of petitions for financial aids to lawyers, the court asked Mehta to convene a meeting to discuss the proposal of Bar associations for the Centre to arrange a sum of Rs three lakhs to struggling lawyers, with Bar councils and associations standing as guarantors.
"The Bar is primarily responsible to help lawyers, governments have a secondary role," the bench said.
The Bar Council of India, for its part, said its resources were completely drained.