The Jharkhand High Court through its office order issued the guidelines for hearing of urgent matters through Video Conferencing. These guidelines have been released in view of direction of the Supreme Court laying down Standard Operating Procedure for advocate and parties for mentioning, e-filing and Video conferencing hearing and for effective access to justice by conduct of Court proceeding through Video-Conferencing, in consideration of the current pandemic and nationwide lockdown.
The fresh filing of urgent matters can be made through an email, and the matters which get consent from the Chief Justice will get listed for hearing before the Bench. The matter will be taken up only on a written undertaking of the Advocate, stating that he has already realized the court fee from the client, which will be deposited once the situation is normalized.
The mentioning application will also require a prayer for exemption from filing duly affirmed affidavit in the prevailing circumstances along with an undertaking that physical copies of the document relied upon in the petition, deficit court fee or other charges, will be filed at the earliest.
The party will not be permitted to rely upon any document other than the documents filed along with the petition. The mentioning advocate is also required to indicate the contact details of the Senior Advocate or the arguing counsel in the mentioning application.
Matters found to be of urgent nature will be taken up for hearing through V.C or otherwise as per the direction of Hon’ble The Chief Justice, and only such number of staffs that facilitate hearing will be permitted to remain present by the concerned Judge. A Help Line No. has also been created and persons having difficulty in audio-visual during video conferencing can report it on the given Help Line number immediately or through email on the email ID.
On a given day Only limited staff is required to be called to make a list of ready cases under supervision of Joint Registrar in order to follow social distancing. Consent of both the lawyers will be taken telephonically to ensure that they are ready to conduct the case through the Video Conferencing, after which they are placed before Chief Justice for his approval.
After obtaining the soft copy of the file from ICONMA Officials and after comparing the same with the original hard copy of the file, the soft copy of the complete file is transmitted in a Pen Drive to the office of the Hon’ble Judge along with the original case record after sanitization, if asked.
The matter will be taken up through V.C. from the residential office of the Judge and the lawyers will also participate from their own residential office or home or from the helpdesk of the High Court where V.C. facility is available. The orders and judgments will be uploaded within 24 hrs. from signing of the orders on the website
After obtaining the soft copy of the file from ICONMA Officials and after comparing the same with the original hard copy of the file, the soft copy of the complete file is transmitted in a Pen Drive to the office of the Hon’ble Judge along with the original case record after sanitization, if asked. The matter will be taken up through V.C. from the residential office of the Judge and the lawyers will also participate from their own residential office or home or from the helpdesk of the High Court. The Court will also issue fresh directions from time to time.
Instructions for lawyers to attend hearing through video conferencing:
- After joining the virtual court room, the arguing counsel will introduce himself to the Bench and on being asked, will then make submissions, and at once ‘mute’ the MIC of the respective device on completion of the submissions.
- The MIC must be kept on mute at all times, except when the Bench asks the parties to make submissions. When one party is making submission, it will be for all other participants to keep their respective MIC muted failing which the possibility of MIC catching audio feed from the speakers and creating echo and noise disturbance will become very high and may disturb the video conference.
- Simultaneous submission by more than one party at any given time should be avoided and each party will indicate requirement to speak by asking for permission from the Bench by raising a hand.
- Parties cannot resort to any indecorous conduct or dress or comment and are also prohibited from recording, copying, storing and broadcasting, of the hearing and proceedings by any means.
-India Legal Bureau