The Delhi High Court Thursday asked the Centre and Delhi government whether legal aid lawyers and judicial officers in the 18-44 age bracket, working to implement Supreme Court orders to decongest prisons, can walk-in for vaccination shots at the centres set up in district courts, saying “you cannot send someone to war without a gun,” Justice Navin Chawla said legal aid lawyers and judicial officers were working to ensure that the apex court’s directions are implemented and need to be protected against the Covid-19 pandemic.

The court was hearing a plea by the Delhi State Legal Services Authority (DSLSA), represented by advocate Ajay Verma, seeking directions to the Centre and Delhi government to urgently vaccinate judicial officers and legal aid lawyers at the vaccination centres set up in district courts. The central government told the court that at present there is no separate classification of lawyers as frontline workers for priority in vaccination and said that the issue of vaccinating the legal aid lawyers was a pan-India concern. Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma also told the court that there was a gestation period of more than a month between the first and second shot of vaccination and during this period the legal aid lawyers would be exposed to the risk of Covid-19 infection.