Facing difficulties in holding virtual courts due to infrastructure crunch: Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal tells Bombay HC

The Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal (MAT) told the Bombay High Court that it is facing difficulties in conducting video conference hearings due to lack of adequate infrastructure to hold virtual courts. . In a report filed before the High Court, the Registrar of MAT, SK Joshi informed the court that “due to lack of proper infrastructure required for the E-Courts, the Tribunal is facing lot of difficulties for conducting matters via Video-Conferencing & filing through E-Courts.”.He added that presently the computers which are in use at MAT are “very old and non-functional in as much as the hearing of matters through Video-Conferencing is concerned.”.The report was filed in response to a plea by one Yogesh Morbale, an advocate from Kolhapur, Maharashtra raising grievance that several lawyers stuck in native places outside city limits do not have access to MAT because of lack of online filing and hearing at the tribunal. The plea had been filed through advocate Vinod Sangvikar. .Morbale has sought directions from the Court to MAT to conduct virtual hearings through video conferencing on a daily basis. He also added that the website should be made more user-friendly in order to support the e-court system..The report was submitted to the Court by MAT after the Division Bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice GS Kulkarni ordered Joshi to submit a report suggesting measures to ameliorate the grievances raised in the petition. .Joshi also informed the High Court that the MAT is facing shortage of technical support to conduct virtual hearings and had requested the Director of Information Technology to assist it in functioning of e-courts and to update the website of the tribunal..It was also submitted that Morbale's matters could have been heard through video conferencing by MAT on any date and time after getting the technical support from the Director of Information Technology, Government of Maharashtra..Importantly, it was submitted that the Chairpersons and the members of MAT were also willing to work through video-conferencing in all three benches and they only lacked the technical support to do the same. .He also added that MAT has been functioning physically twice a week since June 2020 by following all precautionary measures and directions of the Central and the State Government..Details were given regarding the filing and disposal of cases - a total of 1632 cases were filed and 599 cases were disposed, from June 2020 across the three benches of the MAT..Joshi also apprised the court that a webinar was held by MAT and members of Bar Association with Justice RC Chavan, Vice-Chairperson of the National E-courts committee to address the issues pertaining to E-courts/ video conferencing..[Read order here]