Supreme Court issues standard operating procedure (SOP) for advocates, petitioners-in-person for virtual hearings

The Supreme Court has issued fresh standard operating procedure for advocates and petitioners-in-person for the hearings before the Supreme Court via video conferencing. .This consolidated SOP details how the matters will be listed, and the modalities for mentioning and video conferencing..On categories of matters to be taken up by the Court, it is stated that the pool of fresh matters that were to be listed before the Court but could not be so done on account of the pandemic will be listed first. After the exhaustion of this pool of matters, the short category matters will be listed, the circular says..It details further the schedule of the publication of the causelist pointing out that the advance causelist for any day will be published, as far as possible, three days in advance..As regards joining the video conference for the hearing, the advocate or party would be required to inform if they would be joining the hearing from their own desktop/laptop or would be using the facilities provided by the Supreme Court. .A maximum of two appearance links will be provided per party, the circular says and the details of the two persons should be forwarded by the Advocate on the designated e-mail ID in the prescribed form by 2PM on the day prior to the day of the hearing..The petitions and applications must be duly filed preferably through the e-filing channel and after the same is duly done, an application for mentioning may be sent via email in case an urgent hearing in a matter is sought. .The SOP also details the other parameters required to be duly made in the mentioning application such as synopsis, reason for urgency, contact details, whether Supreme Court's facilities for video conferencing will be used by the party, among others..A step by step procedure to join the video conferencing and to ensure its smooth functioning is also laid down in the circular..Read the Circular: