Gauhati High Court to resume functioning from April 20

The Guhati High Court has decided to resume its functioning in a “limited” manner from April 20 in view of the extension of the nationwide lockdown till May 3.

The court will to take up urgent matters from April 20 only via video conferencing keeping in mind the social distancing norm, The Telegraph reported.

“In the principal seat at Guwahati, only the cases of urgent nature will be taken up in the courtrooms equipped with video conferencing facilities, so as to maintain social distancing between the advocates and the judges,” said an official notification from High Court registrar’s office.

“In the high court complex, separate facilities have been arranged from where advocates can make their submissions whereas the judges shall sit at remote locations,” added the notification.

If an advocate wants to conduct his or her case from his/her residence or office, he or she will have to have an Internet connection with bandwidth not less than 5 Mbps.

“The counsel shall be required to give intimation to the high court’s computer cell at least three working days before the proposed hearing,” it further said.

According to the order, the computer cell, on receipt of such intimation, will provide a set of user name and password to the advocate concerned to get connected to the courtroom concerned on the date of hearing.

A time slot shall be allotted against each such case during which the advocate shall have to conclude the arguments.

Email IDs were also provided for the advocates to send a request for urgent hearing of matters.

The court has also asked petitioners to file soft copies or legible scanned copies of petitions in a pen drive along with the hard copies.

The registrar’s office said the data in the pen drive must be an exact replica of the original petition and any deviation would be viewed “seriously”.

“All district courts working under the jurisdiction of the Gauhati High Court are hereby directed to make necessary arrangements of video conferencing facility in the similar manner and take up urgent matters,” the notification said.