Karnataka High Court Issues Guidelines For Resumption Of Video Conference Hearings On A Pilot Basis From December 11

Karnataka High Court to resume video conference hearing of court proceedings from December 11.

On December 5, the High Court temporarily suspended Video Conference facilities in all the Courts of the High Court of Karnataka at Bengaluru, Dharwad, and Kalaburagi.

The guidelines for the resumption of video conferencing on a pilot basis issued by the Registry state that all the Advocates, party-in-persons, Litigants, and Media persons shall get themselves compulsorily registered on the Zoom platform as a one-time measure by signup procedure.

Only such registered users would be allowed to join the Video Conference for the Court hall proceedings as signed-in users. The Advocates, party-in-persons, and Litigants shall put their participant Names as List No. Case no and name. (Ex. List-1: WP 1/2003: Rama), it states.

Media persons shall be required to put their name along with the media house which they represent compulsorily. A waiting room is enabled in all the Court halls. Only the participants with the correct case nos shall be allowed to participate in the Court Proceedings.

For participants from outside India, an advance must be sent to the Registrar Judicial requesting permission to join the VC links.

While suspending the video-conferencing facilities, Chief Justice Prasanna B Varale had orally said, “An unfortunate situation has arisen. We are stopping on the live streaming, video conferencing. We are not permitting video conferencing facility, live streaming facility. Unfortunately some mischief is being played. There may be some mischief player.”

In a First Information Report filed before the police under Sections 67 and 67 (A) of the Information Technology (IT) Information Technology act, it was stated that unknown users displayed obscene images through video conferencing and obstructed the proceedings of the court.

The High Court in 2021 had begun live-streaming court proceedings on a trial basis. The first live stream was made available on May 31, on the Karnataka High Court's official YouTube page. The first hearing to be live-streamed was from Court Hall number one, where a division bench of Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Suraj Govindaraj wereseated.

The High Court had in 2022, notified the Karnataka Rules on Live Streaming and Recording of Court Proceedings, which came into force from January 1, 2022.

Click Here To Read Guidelines