[Virtual hearings as fundamental right] Supreme Court allows impleadment of all High Courts that stopped hybrid hearings

In the case seeking declaration of virtual hearing as a fundamental right, the Supreme Court on Monday allowed the impleadment applications to make all those High Courts, which have stopped entertaining virtual-hearing requests, a party to the case before the top court [All India Association of Jurists vs Uttarakhand High Court and ors]..A Bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and Sudhanshu Dhulia also allowed impleadment of the E-committee of the Supreme Court. Further, the bench issued notice in the petition by advocate Varun Thakur, one of the three pleas that was before the top court in the matter.The Court had already issued notice in the other two petitions, one filed by All India Jurists Association and another by National Federation of Societies for Fast Justice..Advocate Siddharth R Gupta, appearing for the petitioner, submitted on Monday that it was the Uttarakhand High Court that first stopped hybrid hearings and subsequently "as a cascading effect all High Courts started following including the Madhya Pradesh High Court".The Bench then stated that the matter would have to be heard at length and said that it will list the case on a non-miscellaneous day..The CJI-led Bench had earlier directed that the case be placed before a Bench led by Justice DY Chandrachud, who is also the chairman of the e-courts project of the Supreme Court.The plea filed by the All India Jurists Association, a body of more than 5,000 lawyers across the country, and journalist Sparsh Upadhyay of Livelaw, has sought a declaration that right to participate in court proceedings through virtual courts via video conference is a fundamental right under Article 19(1)(a) and (g) of the Constitution.The petitioner-association has contended that the High Courts of Uttarakhand, Bombay, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala were not providing joining links for attending cases through virtual mode. Their plea argues that the denial of access to the facility of hearing cases through virtual mode is akin to denial of fundamental Rights under Articles 19 and 21 of the Constitution.The plea filed through advocate Sriram Parakkat has stated that virtual courts and conducting cases through video conference by resorting to use of information, communication and technology is a fundamental right available to every lawyer under Article 19(1)(a) and (g) of the Constitution.Such access cannot be defeated or dispensed with on procedural grounds of lack of technology or infrastructure or inconvenience of the courts in handling them, the petitioner has submitted.Interestingly, the petitioner-association has also sought impleadment of the E-Committee of the Supreme Court as one of the parties to the case.Another plea filed by the National Federation of Societies for Fast Justice through advocate Mrigank Prabhakar has also sought a directive to the High Courts to refrain from discontinuing with the option of video conference and virtual court hearings without the permission of the Supreme Court’s e-committee..[Follow our coverage of today's hearing]