The Karnataka High Court issued the guidelines to resume the video conference hearing of court proceedings from December 11.
The Karnataka High Court temporarily suspended Video Conference facilities in all the Courts of the High Court of Karnataka at Bengaluru, Dharwad, and Kalaburagi on December 05.
The guidelines issued for the resumption of video conferencing on a pilot basis issued by the Registry state that all the Advocates, party-in-persons, Litigants, and Media persons shall get themselves compulsorily registered on the Zoom platform as a one-time measure by signup procedure.
The guidelines issued stated that only such registered users would be allowed to join the Video Conference for the Court Hall proceedings as signed-in users. Thus, the Advocates, party-in-persons, and Litigants shall put their participant Names as List No. Case no and name. Ex. List-1: WP 1/2003: Rama.
The Media persons shall be required to put their name along with the media house which they represent compulsorily and the waiting room is enabled in all the Court halls. Thus, only the participants with the correct case now shall be allowed to participate in the Court Proceedings.
It has been stated that for participants from outside India, an advance must be sent to the Registrar Judicial requesting permission to join the VC links.
The bench headed by Chief Justice Prasanna B Varale while suspending the video-conferencing facilities stated that an unfortunate situation has arisen and we are stopping on the live streaming, vi deo conferencing. This court is not permitting video conferencing facility, live streaming facility. Unfortunately, some mischief is being played and here may be some mischief player.
It was stated in the First Information Report filed before the police as stated under Section 67 and Section 67 (A) of the Information Technology (IT) Information Technology act that the unknown users displayed obscene images through video conferencing and obstructed the proceedings of the court.
The High Court in the year 2021 had begun live-streaming court proceedings on a trial basis. On May 31, the first live stream was made available on the Karnataka High Court’s official YouTube page.
The first hearing to be live-streamed was from Court Hall number one, where a division bench of Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Suraj Govindaraj were seated.
In 2022, the High Court notified the Karnataka Rules on Live Streaming and Recording of Court Proceedings, which came into force from January 1, 2022.