A full court meeting of Supreme Court judges has resolved to live-stream Constitution Bench hearings.
For now, the Supreme Court would stream its hearings on YouTube with technical support from the National Informatics Centre. For the long-term, the court is planning to launch a dedicated platform to live-stream hearings.
The live-streaming may start from September 27. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, the court’s e-committee chairperson, said in the full court meeting that the technological requirements for live-streaming is already in place.
The announcement comes after a recent letter from senior advocate Indira Jaising seeking live-streaming of important case hearings, especially those being heard by Constitution Benches.
Chief Justice of India U.U. Lalit had called a meeting of all the judges on September 20 and placed the letter before them for consideration. The judges had agreed to the proposal of going ahead.
On August 26, the court had live-streamed the ceremonial Bench hearing of outgoing Chief Justice N.V. Ramana.
The court’s Swapnil Tripathi judgment of September 2018 had upheld the plea for live-streaming of its proceedings. In that judgment, the court had said live-streaming would “virtually” expand the court beyond the four walls of the courtroom.
“Live-streaming of court proceedings has the potential of throwing up an option to the public to witness live court proceedings which they otherwise could not have due to logistical issues and infrastructural restrictions,” the court had said.
Justice Chandrachud, who was on the Bench, had observed that live-streaming of proceedings would be the true realisation of the “open court system” in which courts were accessible to all.
The court had laid down several conditions in the 2018 judgment, mostly in consonance with those handed over by Attorney General K.K. Venugopal.
