Lawyers in Mumbai not Keen on Resuming Physical Hearings From December 01, 2020

Lawyers be Given the Option to Choose Between Physical and Virtual Hearings: Bombay Bar Association (BBA) tells Bombay High Court. 

In response to the official order from the Bombay High Court stating that the most benches of High Court from 1st of December, 2020 to 10th of January, 2021 will conduct a physical hearing on an experimental basis, the members of Bombay Bar Association and 452 lawyers practising in Mumbai on Sunday separately wrote to Bombay High Court Chief Justice, Dipankar Datta to reconsider physical hearing. Resuming physical hearings at this stage could lead to a hike in Covid cases   

Bombay Bar Association along with 452 lawyers, senior and junior, practising in Mumbai requested the Chief Justice to modify the office order released on Friday and to allow lawyers to choose between virtual and physical hearings on the lines of a similar direction given by Delhi High Court.

Resuming physical hearing will create a “one-step forward, two steps back” situation. 

The lawyers reminded the Chief Justice that many courts have failed in their attempt to restart the system of physical hearings again.  The reopening of Bombay HC on an experimental basis could lead to the outbreak of COVID cases among the lawyers and staff of the Court. It could be detrimental for the families of the lawyers also. The lawyers have cited similar incidents in Rajasthan, Delhi,  Karnataka, Patna, Chennai, Allahabad, Meghalaya and Jharkhand High Courts.

The lawyers supported their contentions with adequate reasoning given below:

1. The resuming of the court will be ardours for the lawyers who are dependent on public transport, boarding for trains is only at 11 am. 

2. Every individual will be sharing common amenities of the courtroom for the whole day and therefore, sanitation of those amenities will be a difficult task. 

3. The regulation of interaction among the staffs of the  Courts will turn out to be difficult. Therefore physical hearings, even in a limited manner, will aggressively increase human interaction and eventually, the communication of Corona. 

4. The representation also highlighted that the reopening of the physical court will likely to increase the number of people attending the court on daily basis and the result thereof the same will lead to long queues and crowding at the entrance of the Gate and people would have to wait for a long time due to temperature checking, sanitization etc.  

5. There will be a great inrush of people in Mumbai in case the lawyers who have gone back to their native places and are forced to come back for physical hearings.  

The lawyers in their application seem to be in favour of starting a hybrid system involving a mix of physical and virtual courts. The Bombay Bar Association assured of setting up a flawless virtual system with the help of technical assistance.