Supreme Court of India
New Delhi: An eCommittee of the Supreme Court has set up a Committee to draw up Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for live streaming of court proceedings, Kiren Rijiju, Union Minister of Law and Justice, stated in Lok Sabha today. He informed that additionally, under the guidance of eCommittee, a sub-committee was constituted for framing model rules for live streaming. The said rules have been forwarded to the Computer Committee of High Courts for feedback and suggestions.
Live Streaming of video conferencing of proceedings has already been started in High Courts of Gujarat, Orissa, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Patna and Madhya Pradesh thus allowing media and other interested persons to join the proceedings, Rijiju said.
It may be mentioned a writ petition in this regard was filed in the Supreme Court, seeking declaration for permitting live streaming of Supreme Court case proceedings of constitutional and national importance having an impact on the public at large. The petitioner Indira Jai Singh had also sought a direction to make available the necessary infrastructure for live streaming and to frame guidelines for the determination of such cases which are of constitutional and national importance.
The Supreme Court in its judgement of September 26, 2018, in Writ Petition of Indira Jai Singh versus Secretary General of Supreme Court & Others had observed that : (i) it is important to re-emphasise the significance of live-streaming as an extension of the principle of open justice and open courts; (ii)The process of live-streaming should be subjected to carefully structured guidelines, (iii) Initially, a pilot project may be conducted for about three months by live-streaming only cases of national and constitutional importance which can be expanded in due course with the availability of infrastructure.
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