Supreme Court resumes work at near full strength after 7 months gap

On Monday after a gap of nearly seven months the Supreme Court resumed working almost full strength although virtuallyTwenty eight judges of the 30 apex court strength sat for hearing cases through video conferencing The eight benches conducting hearing through video conferencing comprise of three judges while two benches have two judges each Justices Vineet Saran and Mohan M Shantanagoudar are not sittingSince March 23 the top court has been functioning in a restricted manner where it took up matters virtually in the backdrop of the ongoing pandemicFollowing the outbreak in March a maximum of five benches used to sit daily taking up matters on an average close to 30 cases per bench through video conferencingTwo singlejudge benches are sitting to hear cases connected with transfer petitions This is likely to continue the entire week and 10 may sit each day to take up matters virtuallyThe apex court had suspended physical hearings on March 23 and issued directions to take up only urgent matters through video conferencing in the lockdown period but this trend continued even after the lockdown was liftedOn August 31 the Supreme Court had issued standard operating procedure SOP for proposed experimental physical hearing of cases on the request of various lawyers bodiesHowever no date was put out in the SOPs for the resumption of physical hearingThe SOP issued by Secretary General Sanjeev S Kalgaonkar said On an experimental basis and as a pilot scheme physical hearing of matters may initially commence in three Courtrooms eventually number of matters or the number of Courtrooms may be increased or reduced as the situation may warrant or permitEarlier in August a sevenjudge committee headed by Justice NV Ramana took note of requests made by various lawyers associations to resume physical hearing of the cases on an experimental basis while adhering to safety guidelinesThe SOP said only such number lawyers or parties may be permitted to appear inside the courtrooms which does not exceed the working capacity of the courts as determined under physical distancing normsThe top court administration had said until further order entry into the High Security Zone through proximity cardslong term passes shall be kept suspendedJustices Ramana Arun Mishra Rohington Nariman UU Lalit AM Khanwilkar DY Chandrachud and LN Rao are part of the committee set up by the Chief Justice to look into the issue connected with resumption of physical hearingsKeep scrolling to read more newsCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates MidDay is now on Telegram Click here to join our channel middayinfomedialtd and stay updated with the latest newsThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever