SC Lays Down Video Conferencing Procedure For Urgent Hearings

The judges of Supreme Court on Monday evolved the modalities for video conferencing after a meeting with the representatives of the Supreme Court Bar Association and Supreme Court Advocates on Record Association.

The meeting was held by Justices L. Nageswara Rao, Surya Kant and Justice Aniruddha Bose and attended by Mr. Dave Sr Adv, President, SCBA, Ashok Arora Secretary. SCBA, Joseph Aristotle S. Secretary SCAORA and Tushar Mehta, Solicitor General.

It was discussed in the meeting that the Court will constitute two benches for hearing of extremely urgent matters which will be conducted only through video conferencing.

An app called 'vidyo' will be available for download by today evening and the same is downloadable for all android and Apple based smartphones. The said app will function in all smartphones, desktops, mobiles, laptops, netbooks, ipads etc. that have cameras.

During this period of shut down an email id that is mention.sc@sci.nic.in will be available to the lawyers to email their urgency matters.

A synopsis of the urgency similar to the urgency affidavit filed during vacations not exceeding one page should be emailed along with the petition/application to the registry at mention.sc@sci.nic.in by the AOR and the same will be forwarded to the available bench constituted for matters of urgency. The said application should also clearly contain the details of the AOR especially the email id and mobile no. of AOR. After the approval of the urgency by the Hon'ble Judge, the matter will be listed in the cause list BM of the following day. The cause list will also bear the appropriate time of the matter for video conference.

In case of the urgent matters that were filed by email but not being listed in the cause list, a telphone number will be provided by the registry for the purpose of AOR's to mention to the Presiding Hon'ble Judge about the urgency which will be available only between 10.30 to 11.00 a.m. of the following day of the filing.

On matters being listed for hearing in the cause list along with time, a link will be sent to the email of the AOR on the very same email id (as mentioned in the application of urgency) and the link will be used only for video conference of that particular case at that particular time. Lawyers may click on the link and conduct their video conference at their respective allotted time.

Based on the progress of the video conference of the aforesaid matters, cases pertaining to bail also will be considered to be listed subsequently on priority of urgency basis. 

The SC bench headed by CJI SA Bobde on Monday held a trial run for video conferencing.