E-Paper
In a first, livestreaming of Supreme Court hearings
The Supreme Court had passed a ruling on live-streaming cases in 2018.
For the first time, the Supreme Court went live on Tuesday as the hearing of the cases - scheduled to be livestreamed during the day - could be seen online. Of the three cases scheduled to be livestreamed, one of the cases was from Maharashtra - Team Uddhav Thackeray against Team Eknath Shinde - amid a row over the symbol of Shiv Sena with the Election Commission already involved in the matter too. Lawyer Kapil Sibal could be seen making arguments - this was the second hearing that was broadcast live.
The top court had suggested live-streaming about four years ago. To access the proceedings, one can use this URL - webcast.gov.in/scindia/.
In 2018, the chief justice of India at the time, Dipak Misra, had passed the landmark ruling on September 27 on the live telecast for important proceedings, saying "sunlight is the best disinfectant”.
A full court, comprising all the judges of the top court, deliberated upon the matter on 20 September and took a decision to live-stream constitutional bench proceedings from this week. The full court meeting was presided over by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Uday Umesh Lalit wherein all the judges were unanimous that live-streaming, on a regular basis, should commence with broadcasting constitutional cases.
The proposition to have an exclusive platform to live-stream apex court proceedings formed part of the third phase of the e-courts project, which is an ambitious initiative to implement the use of information and technology in India’s judiciary, HT had reported.
Some of the high courts that also livestream hearings are those in Gujarat, Orissa, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Patna and Madhya Pradesh.
(With inputs from PTI)
