All the Supreme Court judges will hold video hearings from their respective residences. As several staff members of the Supreme Court have tested positive, all the courtrooms are currently being sanitised.
Presently, a second circular issued on an urgent basis by the court said the physical mentioning of cases have been suspended for the time being considering that most of the cases are in Registry.
Monday’s hearings have been re-scheduled by an hour to sanitise the courtrooms.
A short circular was issued stating that hearings scheduled for 10.30 a.m have been postponed to 11.30 a.m. and those at 11 a.m. have been pushed to noon.
India is experiencing a ferocious new wave of the pandemic with around 10 lakh new cases being reported over the past week.
Today was the sixth consecutive day it reported over a lakh daily cases with 1,68,912 new infections — the highest ever daily surge till now. Up to to 904 people died of Covid-related issues in the past 24 hours, according to the latest Health Ministry data published this morning.
The country currently leads the world in the daily average number of new infections reported in more than two weeks, accounting for one in every six infections reported globally each day.
The new president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, senior advocate Vikas Singh, had been pressing the CJI and other Judges for resuming a complete physical hearing in the Supreme Court just a month back.
Singh was arguing that the non-opening of the courts for physical hearing was severely affecting the finances of the young lawyers.
If the SC had succumbed to the pressure and opened the courts for physical hearing, then the courts would have become the fertile field for spreading the Covid disease given the huge crowds of lawyers that gather every day for hearing along with litigants from all parts of the country.
