The Supreme Court of India will live telecast the hearings of the constitutional bench from 27 September, a month after the apex court issued a notice to live stream hearings of the ceremonial bench.
A full court, comprising all the judges of the top court, deliberated upon the matter on 20 September and took a decision to live-stream constitutional bench proceedings from this week.
The full court meeting was presided over by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Uday Umesh Lalit wherein all the judges were unanimous that live-streaming, on a regular basis, should commence with broadcasting constitutional cases.
The proposition to have an exclusive platform to live-stream apex court proceedings formed part of the third phase of the e-courts project, which is an ambitious initiative to implement the use of information and technology in India’s judiciary.
Three constitutional bench hearings are concurrently underway and can be watched on webcast.gov.in, run by National Informatics Centre (NIC) using YouTube as a streaming platform.
In one of the cases being live-streamed, the court is discussing the constitutional validity of the 10 per cent reservation for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS). Other cases include the Maharashtra political crisis and the ongoing tussle for jurisdiction between the Central and Delhi governments.
The CJI, however, said that the court will soon have its own platform so that it will not have to rely on YouTube to live-stream the proceedings.
Live-streaming has become a reality nearly four years after the court’s Swapnil Tripathi judgment of September 2018 in which it 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.
