Madhya Pradesh High Court Decides To Provide Weblink To Access Live Court Proceedings

The Madhya Pradesh High Court administration has decided that it will start providing the web links on its website so that the same could be accessed and court proceedings could be viewed which are currently being held via video conferencing mode.

The Administration has informed about its decision on a writ plea filed by 4 Journalists [Nupur Thapliyal, Sparsh Upadhyay (Live Law), Areeb Uddin Ahmed (Bar & Bench) and Rahul Dubey (Dainik Bhaskar Prakashan)]. 

The administration has stated on record the minutes of the e-committee's meeting of High Court averring that the same has resolved to provide the live web links of the hearings being conducted through virtual mode on its website.

The copy of the statement filed by the High Court Administration, and accessed by Live Law, further states that it has approved to provide the weblinks and a resolution to this effect had been passed on June 15 pursuant to a meeting of the High Court's Computer and e-Committee, which was held on June 14.

The journalists, Nupur Thapliyal (Legal Correspondent, Live Law), Sparsh Upadhyay (Special Legal Correspondent, Live Law), Areeb Uddin Ahmed (Legal Correspondent, Bar, and Bench), and Rahul Dubey (Legal Correspondent, Dainik Bhaskar) have challenged the MP Video Conferencing & Audio-Visual Electronic Linkage Rules, 2020 to the extent they preclude 'third parties' from accessing virtual court proceedings and cause difficulty to media persons in real-time reporting on a public forum for citizens.

On this plea, the High Court administration, urging the Court to dismiss the petition moved by the journalists as infructuous, informed the Court that the Computer and e-Committee of the High Court have resolved that until the finalization of rules for live-streaming of court proceedings, the link for viewing live-streamed High Court proceedings may be shared through the Court's website i.e. www.mphc.gov.in in a one-way mode.

However, the reply does not state when the links would be provided and whether the link would be a consolidated one or individual links for each court would be provided. 

Nidhesh Gupta, Senior Advocate, who is appearing for the petitioner journalists, during the course of the last hearing had pressed for an interim relief that the journalists must be permitted to attend the live hearings of the Courtroom proceedings in the matters they want to attend, since Live-streaming of all the Courts for the journalists and the litigants to attend may take a while or maybe a much longer time.