Let e-hearings go on, Bombay HC CJ urged – Times of India

MUMBAI: The Bombay Bar Association (BBA) and several senior lawyers on Sunday requested Bombay high court chief justice Dipankar Datta to rethink a move to bring back physical hearings in place of the video-conferences that have become the norm since the lockdown began.
They have urged the chief justice (CJ) to continue with virtual courts till at least December 31, after which, they said, it may be re-assessed. The video conferencing mode has been “already successfully used for many months,” said the BBA.
The group wrote a letter to the CJ Sunday morning to reconsider Friday’s order by which almost the entire high court at the principal seat in Mumbai would go physical from December 1, albeit on an ‘experimental basis’ till January 10. Physical hearings were suspended in the last week of March when the numbers of Covid cases in Maharashtra were less than 50.
About 15 lawyers, including senior counsel V A Thorat, Prasad Dhakephalkar, Shirish Gupte and Amit Desai, sought the choice to appear virtually or physically. They cited a “24%” rise in active Covid cases in the past week alone in Mumbai. The BBA held a meeting around 4 pm to discuss the issue. Its secretary advocate Birendra Saraf said it had received feedback from many lawyers “expressing grave concern on the making of physical appearances mandatory in so many courts given the pandemic.’’