As Covid-19 cases continue to rise in the national capital, a lawyer has moved the Delhi High Court seeking directions to ensure the continuation of hearings through hybrid mode (combination of both physical and virtual) in the High Court and other courts under its jurisdiction.
The plea filed by Advocate Mujeeb Ur Rehman is likely to come up for hearing on April 5 before the division bench of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jasmeet Singh.
Rehman sought the court’s directions to the respondents including the Registrar General, Delhi High Court, to take sufficient steps to ensure the continuation of virtual court proceedings through video conferencing along with the physical one in the High Court of Delhi and vis-à-vis courts and tribunals over which this court has jurisdiction.
“The Covid-19 pandemic is neither eradicated completely nor all the people have been vaccinated for it, so the danger is still continuing, and it may continue for few more years,” the plea said.
“Every calamity brings destruction with it but we can take out positive things from the Covid-19 pandemic and this is that we have learnt virtual court proceedings and are using it effectively; and that we can continue and adopt the use of virtual court proceedings along with the physical one in every effective way to save time and efforts which in turn can be utilized to dispose maximum number of cases on daily basis,” the plea added.
The petition further sought directions to the respondents to formulate sufficient guidelines and to ensure sufficient infrastructure for continuation and adoption of virtual court proceedings along with the physical one in the High Court of Delhi and vis-à-” courts and tribunals over which this court has jurisdiction as a free choice for the counsels, litigants and parties unless in view of such court it’s really necessary to be physically present even if COVID-19 pandemic is absolutely over as a regular course of practice and should be given equal weightage as to the physical one without barring from adverse order.
India reported 89,129 new cases of Covid-19 on Friday, according to data from the Union Health Ministry. Active cases in the country have risen to 6.58 lakh, while at least 1,15,69,241 have recovered from the disease.
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The capital reported 1496 cases of COVID-19 on Friday taking the total number of active cases to 11,994. Delhi reported 14 new deaths in the last 24 hours while 2,084 recovered from the deadly virus.