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SC meet on Monday to mull total shutdown of apex court
The Supreme Court has been in a state of partial shutdown since March 16.
The Supreme Court will take a call on Monday whether or not to halt the functioning of the court for the time being in view of the coronavirus threat.
A full court meeting will be held at 12.30 pm to consider the suggestions made in this regard by the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) and Supreme Court Advocate-on-Record Association (SCAORA), the two Bar bodies which represent the apex court lawyers.
Besides, a bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI), SA Bobde and DY Chandrachud will hear cases via video conferencing on Monday.
The executive committee (EC) of the SCBA, a body of lawyers practicing in the Supreme Court, had passed a resolution on Saturday requesting the CJI to declare vacation in the Supreme Court for four weeks beginning from March 23.
The Supreme Court has been in a state of partial shutdown since March 16 after a notification was issued by the top court on March 13 by which it was decided that only urgent cases will be listed for hearing.
However, there was a lack of clarity on what constituted urgent matters and a good number of cases came to be listed before the court in the week of March 16. Besides cases of public importance like the case on Madhya Pradesh assembly crisis, a slew of transfer petitions and corporate matters were also listed leading to substantial crowd in the courtrooms of the Supreme Court.
The SCBA has urged the CJI to go for a total shutdown suggesting that the working days which are lost due to closure of the court can be adjusted against the summer vacation in Supreme Court which is scheduled from May 18 to July 5.
The SCAORA which comprises lawyers, who are allowed to file cases in the top court, also passed a similar resolution on Saturday asking the CJI to close the Supreme Court for at least two weeks. Like the SCBA, the SCAORA recommended that lost working days should be compensated by reducing the length of the summer vacation.
Some important cases are listed for hearing before the top court on Monday. This includes the case relating to removal of protestors who are opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) from the Shaheen Bagh protest site in South Delhi.
While at least two petitions were filed before the top court, one in January and the second in February, seeking removal of the protestors citing inconvenience due to road closure, a few fresh pleas were also filed last week directing that the protestors be removed in the light of the coronavirus threat.
All these petitions will be heard on Monday.
Besides, the court will also pronounce its verdict on Monday in an appeal by NDTV against the Delhi high court judgment which had, in 2017, upheld IT Department’s decision to initiate reassessment proceedings against NDTV for the financial year 2008-09 and resort to provisional attachment of its assets in relation to a case on funding received by it through foreign subsidiaries.
