Virtual Hearings To Continue At Bombay High Court Till End Of July

All benches will preside for 5 hours, and the first and third Saturday will be court working Saturdays.

Regarding local train commute for advocates, the State and Centre said it would try and work out the modalities for the same.

The standard operating procedure in this regard is likely to be issued soon.

The Bombay HC at its principal seat in Mumbai and benches at Aurangabad, Nagpur, and the Bombay High Court at Goa is hearing matters virtually since April 2021, owing to the covid-19 second wave. As a result, the courts are mainly taking up urgent matters.

Since courts across the state are functioning at limited capacity, the HC has regularly extended the life of its interim orders preventing evictions, demolitions. (SUO MOTU PIL NO. 1 OF 2021).

Hearing a PIL by the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa, the Chief Justice asked the state to decide on allowing lawyers to commute on local trains by July 1, considering the lack of public transportation and the increase in pendency of cases before various courts.

"…Otherwise, one year later, the pendency will be such that even if you have 100 judges in the Bombay High Court we will not be able to get matters disposed of," the bench observed.

Apart from five senior-most judges of the Bombay High Court, ie. the CJ, Justices AA Sayyed, SS Shinde and KK Tated the Advocate General of Maharashtra Ashutosh Kumbhakoni, Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh, representatives of the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa, Bombay Bar Association, Advocates Association of Western India (AAWI), Bombay Incorporated Law Society.

Three senior members of the State and Central Task Force, including Dr Sanjay Oak were present and the meeting. They explained that Mumbai was under Level-3 restrictions and even other places with fewer cases hadn't started physical hearings as yet.

The details of the administrative meet were revealed by BBA standing committee.