COVID Omicron : Supreme Court To Hear Only Urgent Matters; Virtual Hearing From Residential Offices Of Judges

In wake of the the sudden upsurge of Covid-19 cases , the Supreme Court of India has decided to hear all the matters in virtual mode with effect from 7th January with the Benches sitting at the Residential Offices

Further only urgent matters will be taken up by the Courts from 10th January.

It has been notified through an official Circular that only extremely urgent 'mentioned' matters, fresh matters, bail matters, matters involving stay, detention matters and fixed date matters will be listed before the Courts till further orders.

It has been notified that the Transfer Petitions will be listed before the Regular Benches, instead of Single Judge Bench and applications for exemption from surrendering will also be listed before the Regular Benches, instead of Chamber Judge, till further orders.

The Chief Justice of India had on Thursday during a hearing indicated that the physical hearing of cases will not resume anytime soon.

"At least for 4-6 weeks we may not be able to have physical hearings" CJI said

In the wake of rising number of cases of omicron variant of Covid 19, the Supreme Court of India earlier week decided to conduct all hearings through virtual mode for two weeks with effect from 3rd January 2021 

According to the official notification released on the court's website, the modified standard operating procedure that was notified on 7th October last year for physical hearing of cases on two days a week will remain suspended for two weeks. 

Read the notification