Supreme Court Directs hearing of Extremely Urgent Matters Via any available mode such as Skype, Facetime, Or Whatsapp

• Date: 27-Jun-2020

In light of orders of a nation-wide lockdown, the Supreme Court of India vide circular dated 26.03.2020 stated that it shall continue to function and to hear matters involving extreme urgency, till further orders in this regard. The Apex Court directed the continuation of steps enlisted vide Circular dated 23.03.2020 which were to be followed by the Advocate-on-Record /Party in-person, and all others concerned. Furthermore, to obviate the inconvenience that may be faced due to unforeseen linkage issue of the ‘Vidyo’ video-conferencing, as detailed in para 4 of the Circular dated 23.03.2020, the Hon’ble Court directed the AOR/Party-in-person to mention their alternative Skype, Facetime or WhatsApp contact details, if any, alongwith other details in their mentioning application. In the wake of the situation prevalent, the Hon’ble Court on 15.04.2020 issued Standard Operating Procedures for Advocates and Party in person for video conferencing hearing, e-filing and mentioning and directed the Registry to take all steps necessary to conduct the aforesaid hearings through remote Video Conference links.

Vide circular dated 18.04.2020, the Supreme Court instructed that Short category matters, Death penalty and Family law matters, shall be taken up through videoconferencing only after the parties have furnished joint consent along with the particulars of the matter by 24.04.2020 on the email address consent.list@sci.nic.in. The Hon’ble Court vide notice dated 20.04.2020 also clarified that the Short category matters will include all the case categories notified by the Hon’ble court vide order dated 12.01.2017.