MADURAI: The Madras High Court is all set to establish a video conferencing facility between its principal seat in Chennai and the Bench here on Monday to enable its judges to hear review applications, filed against orders passed by them on writ appeals, irrespective of their station.
As per court procedure, review applications would generally be posted only before the same judges who had disposed of the writ appeal concerned, in one way or the other, unless they had not retired from service. Such a procedure was followed to ensure that there was continuity in the proceedings.
However, ever since the Madurai Bench was established and the judges of the High Court were posted here on a rotation basis once in three months, the procedure could not be followed scrupulously. Litigants too started taking advantage of the situation and began filing review applications only after the judges posted here left to Chennai or vice-versa.
In order to counter such a situation, Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul had ordered establishment of a video conferencing facility so that the judges could hear review applications filed either in Chennai or Madurai irrespective of their station. He has also agreed to inaugurate the facility from Chennai on Monday.
While the video conferencing unit had been established in Court Hall No. 20 at the Principal Seat, it has been set up at an air-conditioned meeting hall on the third floor of the administrative building at the Bench here. It would facilitate lawyers to advance arguments and the judges to pass orders irrespective of the distance.
Court sources here said that the facility could also be extended to hear contempt of court applications in select cases in the future since such applications were also generally posted only before judges whose orders had been purportedly disobeyed. However, considering the huge volume of such petitions, it may not be possible to utilise video conferencing for all of those petitions.
