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Marking a historic shift towards increased transparency, all constitutional bench hearings before India’s Supreme Court will be live-streamed starting today.
The final decision was taken after a full-court meeting called by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Uday Umesh Lalit last week. At the meeting, the judges came to a unanimous decision of live-streaming the constitutional bench cases.
Three constitutional bench hearings are concurrently underway and can be watchedon webcast.gov.in, run by National Informatics Centre (NIC) using YouTube as a streaming platform.
In one of the cases being live-streamed, the court is discussing the constitutional validity of the 10 per cent reservation for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS). Other cases include the Maharashtra political crisis and the ongoing tussle for jurisdiction between the Central and Delhi governments.
Other important cases to be live-streamed in the coming days include: adequacy of Bhopal Gas Tragedy compensation, the Bohra community’s right to excommunicate and retrospective application of immunity against arrest amongst others.
The CJI, however, said that the court will soon have its own platform so that it will not have to rely on YouTube to live-stream the proceedings.
The decision comes four years after the apex court accepted the idea in principle during the ‘Swapnil Tripathi’ case.
In late 2018, the Supreme Court in a judgement declared that live telecast of court proceedings was part of the right to access justice under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution.
Article 21 deals with the protection of life and personal liberty of individuals by stating, “No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.”
The first instance of the country’s highest court live-streaming its proceedings came in the last week of August when a ceremonial bench bid adieu to outgoing CJI NV Ramana.
While the SC is adopting the live-streaming of court cases now, the High Courts of Gujarat, Orissa, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Patna and Madhya Pradesh have been holding live-streaming of the proceedings through their own YouTube channels, from as early as 2020.
India joins the list of countries such as the UK, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Germany, and China where live-streaming of court cases is permitted.(WION)
