NEW DELHI: The judiciary has taken a giant leap by deciding to open virtual courts across the country to hear urgent cases during the lockdown period and provide video-recording of proceedings to litigants and lawyers. It also resolved to institutionalise e-processes even after normalcy returns.

The Supreme Court ’s e-committee chairman Justice D Y Chandrachud held extensive deliberations with chief justices and judges heading e-committees of 23 high courts on Friday afternoon and resolved that “e-filing will be enabled in all courts, including trial courts , across the country for hearing urgent cases through video-conferencing”.

To dispel any doubt among litigants and lawyers about the efficacy of hearing of urgent matters through video-conferencing, it was decided that video-recording of proceedings in urgent matters will be hosted on websites of the courts concerned.

“Based on assessment of technical issues like availability of sufficient bandwidth and facilities of hosting proceedings on dedicated servers, it was felt that the recordings (of the proceedings) should be hosted on court websites by the next day. This will ensure that people have access to electronic records of court proceedings,” an SC official said.

The meeting decided to enable e-filing consistent with Section 6 of the Information Technology Act , which legalises all transactions by government authorities using electronic records and puts it at par with physical records.

The judges led by Justice Chandrachud were unanimous about providing free facilities for e-filing, scanning and uploading to lawyers and litigants during the lockdown period. “Hearing should be done by providing two cubicles or porta cabins, equipped with camera, desktops etc for video-conferencing. The HCs could use unspent money from phase-II of e-courts project for this purpose,” they decided.

Justice Chandrachud informed participants in the video-conference that “an e-filing system has been developed for trial courts by the SC’s e-committee in collaboration with NIC”. The CJs and judges of HC e-committees agreed that “such use of technology in judiciary, as is being employed during the lockdown period, must be institutionalised even after return of normalcy”.

The meeting also decided that “apart from virtual courts for e-challans under the Motor Vehicles Act, the high courts will consider use of virtual courts for summary cases”. Justice Chandrachud said, “Any difficulty faced may be brought to the notice of the e-committee, which will step in to enhance the software.”

