Supreme Court Queries High Courts and Tribunals on Virtual Hearings
On September 15, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) D.Y. Chandrachud, along with Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, sought clarifications from the Registrar Generals of all High Courts and the Registrars of key tribunals, including the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC), and the National Green Tribunal (NGT). The apex court’s inquiry pertains to the continuation of virtual hearings post the COVID-19 pandemic.
This directive emerged during the hearing of a petition by Sarvesh Mathur, who lamented that the Punjab and Haryana High Court had ceased virtual hearings entirely, despite the infrastructure being in place. Responding to Mathur’s concerns, CJI Chandrachud stated,
“Thank you for bringing this to our attention… we will do something we are thinking for a long time to do… We will ask HCs who have disbanded virtual hearings.”
The bench decided to extend the notice not only to the Punjab and Haryana High Court but to all High Courts across the nation. Furthermore, upon another lawyer’s intervention highlighting similar issues with tribunals, the bench decided to include NCLAT, NCDRC, and NGT in its notice. While there was a suggestion to also notify the Debts Recovery Tribunals (DRTs), the CJI felt that addressing all DRTs might be time-consuming and opted to initially focus on the three aforementioned tribunals.
CJI Chandrachud has been a staunch advocate for hybrid hearings. In February 2023, he expressed his disappointment with several High Courts that had abandoned virtual hearings, despite significant investments in e-court infrastructure. He remarked,
“What some of the Chief Justices are doing is, all the money which we have spent, they’re just disbanding the technological infrastructure which we have created for virtual hearings. I am very deeply disturbed by some of the High Courts doing this… Technology was not only for the pandemic. It’s here to stay here for the future.”
In a recent address to the convocation ceremony of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, CJI Chandrachud emphasized the judiciary’s adaptability during the pandemic, noting that courts across India conducted approximately 43 million virtual hearings. He also highlighted that the Supreme Court alone had overseen 3.37 lakh cases through video conferencing between March 23, 2020, and October 31, 2022.
