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'Whole System Of Virtual Hearing In Supreme Court Needs To Be Reviewed': AG KK Venugopal Undertakes To Writes A Letter To Registrar General

Mehal Jain

6 Jan 2021 11:43 AM IST

    • Whole System Of Virtual Hearing In Supreme Court Needs To Be Reviewed: AG KK Venugopal Undertakes To Writes A Letter To Registrar General

    Attorney General K. K. Venugopal on Wednesday stated that the whole system of virtual court hearings in the Supreme Court needs to be reviewed and that he shall address a letter to the Registrar General in this context.The AG was appearing before the bench headed by Justice L. Nageswara Rao and was unmuted only when the relevant matter had come up on the docket, despite repeated requests on...

    Attorney General K. K. Venugopal on Wednesday stated that the whole system of virtual court hearings in the Supreme Court needs to be reviewed and that he shall address a letter to the Registrar General in this context.

    The AG was appearing before the bench headed by Justice L. Nageswara Rao and was unmuted only when the relevant matter had come up on the docket, despite repeated requests on his behalf to the control room to unmute him during the preceding matter.
    "This is very disturbing. They are keeping us in retention. They should at-least give us connection when the previous matter is going on, otherwise we don't know what is happening", he advanced.
    "The whole system needs to be reviewed. I will write a letter to the Registrar General", said the AG.
    "We agree with you. The situation is going from bad to worse", concurred Justice Rao.
    "Yesterday, in Justice Chandrachud's court, the situation was very bad. There was a tremendous echo. Nobody could be hear", added the AG.
    Senior Advocate C. U. Singh, who was also appearing in the matter, remarked,
    "The screen keeps going black. We see Your Lordships momentarily and then the screen keeps going out and coming back. This is very disconcerting. I thought I had a state-of-art technology but it is not working with this Vidyo format"
    "We can hear you, but you are appearing blurred. There has been a serious problem in the last 3 days", agreed Justice Rao.
    Worse "Very difficult to continue with proceedings in the virtual courts in an appropriate manner", stated the Supreme Court on Tuesday and directed the Secretary General to look into the issue of dissatisfactory working of the virtual hearings at the Apex Court.
    A Bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Dinesh Maheshwari and Hrishikesh Roy, while presiding over a matter, noted with exasperation the failing connection of the virtual Court system.

    "We at the inception must note our exasperation at the inability of the virtual Court system to work satisfactorily in the Supreme Court while there is no such problems in the Delhi High Court next door!", the Order records.

    The Delhi High Court, which is situated near the Supreme Court, uses the facilities of Cisco Webex to conduct virtual court proceedings and the Supreme Court uses Vidyo application for conducting the proceedings.

    The Order goes on to state that the even when there is a single person arguing, there is a resonance of voices and it is difficult to understand why the same is taking place.

    "We have been since yesterday trying to cope with the problem of disconnections, resonance of voices, even when there is single person arguing. It is difficult to understand this despite more licences stated to have been taken. The only voice we hear is the resonance of our own voices!"

    In light of the above, expressing that it has become difficult to conduct proceedings in the virtual courts in an appropriate manner, the Top Court has directed the Secretary General to look into the issue.


    Tags
    Supreme CourtK K VenugopalVirtual HearingLetterRegistrar General#Justice L. Nageswara RaoSenior Advocate C. U. Singh
    Mehal Jain

    Mehal Jain

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