The secretary of the Allahabad High Court Bar Association feels that the arrangements made for lawyers for physical and video conferencing are inadequate and “absolutely chaotic”. In his letter today (July 22) to the Chief Justice of the court, secretary Prabha Shanker Mishra as requested that all activities of the court be suspend till proper arrangements for physical or video conferencing are made.
The letter reads: “Today, i.e. on July 22, 2020, I personally inspected the video conference facility made available by the High Court and it is absolutely chaotic. Advocates are experiencing a lot of trouble with this arrangement and they are not ready to work in this manner. The arrangements that had been made by the High Court prior to the VC cubicles was appropriate. Your lordship is requested to either make proper arrangements for e-filing, manual filing, video conferencing or physical hearing, else it is impossible to work in the present state of affairs. Therefore, you are requested to suspend the functioning of the High Court, in view of the COVID crisis.”
The pandemic has put lawyers in all sorts of trouble. The court had taken this into consideration and had offered a facility of onsite and offsite video conferencing. It was arranged to allow advocates without internet facility or not too tech savvy, to carry on their work and appear before the court.
The High Court restored it’s functioning today. It had remained closed from July 14 to 21.
– India Legal Bureau