The Madras High Court Bench here on Tuesday missed the chance of creating virtual history by a whisker. Though a Division Bench of the High Court had decided to hear a case through video conferencing with one of the two judges sitting in the principal seat of the High Court in Chennai and the other in Madurai, the hearing got cancelled at the last moment since the petitioner in the case had failed to remit batta for issuance of notice to the respondents.
“It would have been a historic day if the proceedings had been conducted as planned. Never in the history of the High Court have two judges constituting a Division Bench heard a case without being physically present together at the same place. The technology available today had shrunk the distance factor and made such things possible. We were very eager to witness this historic moment. Unfortunately, it did not happen,” a court official lamented.
It was a Division Bench of Justices A. Selvam and P. Kalaiyarasan who were slated to hear a revision petition with the former sitting in Madurai and the latter in Chennai. The High Court Registry too had notified the sitting along with the daily cause list (list of cases to be heard by the court). However, when it was brought to the notice of the senior judge that notice had not been served to the respondents, he adjourned the hearing to April 21.
“The judges may not use video conferencing facility even on April 21 because Mr. Justice Kalaiyarasan is expected to come here on that day for the hearing of the case related to eradication of seemai karuvelam trees. This revision petition may also get posted before them on that day and we do not know when the High Court would get another chance of two judges of a Division Bench hearing a case at the same time despite being miles apart physically,” the officer wondered.
He recalled that it was Justice V. Ramasubramanian (now a judge of the High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad for the States of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana) who was the first to tap the technology during his tenure as the administrative judge of the Madras High Court Bench here in November 2015. He had then requested Justice S. Vaidyanathan to utilise video chatting software Skype to hear a case filed in Madurai Bench from the judge’s residence in Chennai.
A month later, a Division Bench of Mr. Justice Ramasubramanian and Justice N. Kirubakaran utilised Skype to hear a case related to Mose Ministries, which ran a girl child care home in Tiruchi, from Chennai. “Subsequently, video conferencing facility was established between the principal seat and the Madurai Bench but never had two judges, being part of a Division Bench, had ever heard a case with one of them sitting in Chennai and the other in Madurai,” he pointed out.
