The Supreme court suppressed its previous circular of march and declared Standard Operating procedure of E filing and hearing via VC with the recommendations of various Bar associates.
The procedure directs that once the filling has been completed, the party –in- person or AOR can send a one page long application discussing the synopsis of urgent matter onmention.sc@sci.nic.in.
This should be done two days prior to the sitting of a Bench latest by 5 PM in order to be considered for urgent hearing. Other parameters required to be duly made in the mentioning application such as request for exemption from filing duly affirmed affidavit, consent for the hearing to be conducted through video conferencing, among others are also mentioned in SOP.
The parties will be intimated about the rejection or acceptance of the application. The circular added about the joining of VC and viewing the hearings and said
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“It may be noted that a maximum of two appearance-links will be provided per party, together with one viewing-link that may be provided for the litigant separately; hence, it is expected that request(s) of such links, if any, should be clearly made in the mentioning-application to enable the Registry to provide the links in time at each point, at the time of the hearing.”
The video conferencing to be conducted on the VIDYO platform hosted on the servers of National Data Centre of National Informatics Centre, Government of India.
The Supreme Court circular further stated:
“It may be further noted that smooth functioning of the video-conference is squarely dependent upon and subject to the connectivity [signal-strength/bandwidth] available at the end of the remote user(s), and hence it is expected that any party joining a video-conference hearing shall ensure robust connectivity and bandwidth are available at their end…”
The circular stated about the use of 2mbps/ 4G data connection. The court should ensure the decorum of attire and court etiquettes. The parties are not allowed to record the hearings and they will be given access to a Whatsapp group to clarify their queries.
The parties may also contact the Mentioning Helpline Telephone Numbers 011-23381463 and 011-23111428 for the same.
Read the Supreme Court Circular here
