In a landmark initiative, the Gujarat High Court became the first to live stream judicial proceedings on YouTube channel. Though it’s on “experimental basis”, the move is being seen as a major measure towards transparency in judicial proceedings.
The YouTube link is available on the homepage of the High Court and has been welcomed by lawyers, law students and the public at large besides litigants.
The court has decided that the proceedings of the Division Bench No 1 [First Court] will be telecast live and the “aspect of continuing with or adapting the modality of live court proceedings will be decided based on the outcome of this trial”.
Chief Justice Vikram Nath passed the order stating that with a view to effectuating and broadening the implementation of open court connect even during the virtual hearings, the High Court has already taken on the administrative side to work out the modalities that can be adopted for giving access to anyone who wishes to watch the court proceedings in live.
Earlier the High Court had formed a committee of judges regarding the live streaming. Subsequently on July 28, while disposing of a PIL in this regard, the two judge-committee comprising Chief Justice Vikram Nath and Justice JB Pardiwala had said: “To observe the requirement of an open court proceedings, the members of the public should be allowed to view the hearings conducted through the video conferencing, except the proceedings ordered for the reasons recorded in writing to be conducted in camera .”
On Monday, the press release issued by the Registrar General said: “All the Benches are functioning through video conferencing throughout the COVID-19 crisis situation from March 24, 2020. Apart from all Ld. advocates of the parties of the sides, the parties, victims, corpuses etc. also, as and when their presence is required during the course of the hearing, are taken in the video hearing for interaction or viewing the proceedings.
“In the model video conferencing rules as prescribed by the eCommittee of the Honourable Supreme Court, it has been provided that the public will be allowed to view the hearing conducted through video conferencing.”
