Justice Suresh Kumar Kait of the Delhi High Court has directed the court registry to not provide a link to video conferencing of hearings in his court to any person, including journalists.
The video conferencing link will be provided only to advocates concerned, the Investigating Officer (IO) concerned, parties in person in case the petition is filed for quashing and to persons specifically directed by the Court to join the proceedings, Justice Kait has directed in an order passed on September 21.
This follows an incident, which Justice Kait described as very 'unpleasant' during the hearing of a case when certain unidentified persons joined the proceedings through video and could be heard talking continuously, thereby, creating a hindrance in hearing the submissions of counsels and proper justice dispensation.
Justice Kait also directed that no advocate would be allowed to share the link with anyone else except Senior Advocates or the advocates appearing on their behalf.
The Delhi High Court, on the administrative side, on June 20 issued a circular in light of its Rules for Video Conferencing for Courts 2020 outlining the procedure to obtain video links to the Court proceedings. The said Circular provided that in order to observe the requirement of an open Court proceeding, members of the public would be allowed to view Court hearings conducted through video conferencing, except proceedings ordered for reasons recorded in writing to be conducted in-camera.
"The Court shall endeavour to make available sufficient links (consistent with available bandwidth) for accessing the proceedings," the circular said.
http://theleaflet.in/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Delhi-HC_Order_No_VC_Links.pdf