Actively Considering Live-Streaming Of Supreme Court Proceedings : CJI NV Ramana

The Chief Justice of India NV Ramana on Thursday said that he was actively considering the proposal to live-stream the proceedings of the Supreme Court.

He made this statement at a virtual function organized to launch a mobile facility for journalists to access the VC hearings of the Supreme Court.

"I am also actively considering the proposal to telecast live the proceedings of the Supreme Court. However, before initiating concrete steps in this regard, I plan to seek general consensus among my colleagues in the Court", CJI Ramana said.

In  2018, a three-judge bench led by then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra had accepted in principle the concept of broadcasting Supreme Court hearings live in the Swapnil Tripathi case. The Court had said in the judgment that live-streaming will increase the transparency of judicial proceedings.

However, the necessary amendments to the Supreme Court rules have not yet been made to frame the modalities for live-streaming.

Last month, Justice DY Chandrachud (who was part of the bench which delivered the Swapnil Tripathi judgment) had said that the E-Committee of the Supreme Court was in the process of finalizing the rules for live-streaming. Justice Chandrachud heads the Supreme Court's E-Committee.

In a recent judgment, Justice Chandrachud had made an observation about the need for live-streaming.

"Unless live-streaming and archival of court proceedings sees the light of the day the absence of records of oral proceedings would continue to bedevil the system", the judgment authored by Justice Chandrachud in the case Election Commission of India vs MR Vijayabhaskar.

The judgment had also noted that three years have elapsed since the decision in Swapnil Tripathi vs Supreme Court of India.

At present, the Gujarat High Court regularly live-streams the proceedings of the Chief Justice's court in YouTube.

In today's function launching the mobile facility for journalists, CJI Ramana spoke about the importance of transparency and public access in judicial proceedings.

"Transparency is a time-honored principle when it comes to the judicial process in our country. Hearing of cases have always taken place in public courtrooms, with access being allowed not only to the lawyers and the litigants in a particular case, but also to the general public. The only restrictions that were ever imposed earlier were because of space and security considerations.

This access to the public is important, as the rulings of the Courts of law, and more particularly the Supreme Court, have a bearing on the lives of people throughout this country. The role of the media assumes importance in the process of disseminating information", CJI Ramana said.