Supreme Court planning to start live streaming of hearings before retirement of CJI NV Ramana

Live streaming of court cases from the Supreme Court of India could soon become a reality, before the retirement of current Chief Justice of India (CJI), NV Ramana on August 26 this year. .Sources working on the project confirmed to Bar & Bench that the apex court was working towards ensuring that court proceedings go live in the next couple of months. It was also revealed that the Supreme Court e-committee was developing an independent platform to host such live telecasts, which will be open for use by the High Courts and district courts as well. .The e-committee had earlier set up an expert committee to draft model uniform rules for the High Courts to adopt live streaming of proceedings..Presently, the Supreme Court Registry is in the process of gathering information on such rules adopted by the High Courts so that the best practices can be incorporated by the top court when it starts live streaming of cases."We don't want to experiment when we do it. We want to make sure that rules governing live streaming address concerns of privacy and delay in live streaming process. Considering there are sensitive matters, we should also make sure intimate and private details can be masked. CJI Ramana will have live telecasting of proceedings on an experimental basis before his tenure comes to an end," a highly placed official said..The official further stated that the top court would need budgetary support from the Central government to have its own cloud infrastructure and independent platform so that it does not have to resort to using YouTube for live streaming..In its September 2018 judgment in Swapnil Tripathi v. Supreme Court of India, the Supreme Court had called for live streaming of cases of constitutional importance that take place in the court of the Chief Justice of India (CJI).A three-judge Bench of then CJI Dipak Misra and Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud had observed in its judgment that “sunlight is the best disinfectant”. It had also directed the administrative side of the Court to frame necessary rules and guidelines to facilitate live streaming of important cases.Pursuant to that, the High Courts of Gujarat, Karnataka, Patna, Orissa and Jharkhand had begun live streaming of hearings. The proceedings of all court rooms of the Gujarat High Court are streamed live on YouTube..Supreme Court E-Committee Chairperson Justice Chandrachud had revealed earlier this year that as part of Phase 3 of the E-courts project, a proposal was made to create infrastructure for live streaming of court proceedings on the Court's own server, as opposed to a third party server.The remarks were made during the hearing of a plea challenging the Bombay High Court's administrative circular restricting the working hours of the Court from 12 in the afternoon to 3 pm in view of surge in COVID-19 cases..Phase 3 of E-courts project in pipeline; will host live streaming, recording from our own server: Justice DY Chandrachud