Bar Council urges Supreme Court to open physical courts from June 1

In a letter to the CJI, Bar Council of India chairman MK Mishra pointed out that 80% of court work in the Indian judicial system relates to trial courts while the rest comprise appeals, revisions and writ petitions.

New Delhi: Bar Council of India has urged CJI SA Bobde to resume physical courts with appropriate social distancing norms from June 1, saying practical constraints such as lack of technology and infrastructure were hampering work in virtual courts.

In a letter to the CJI, Bar Council of India chairman MK Mishra pointed out that 80% of court work in the Indian judicial system relates to trial courts while the rest comprise appeals, revisions and writ petitions.

Among this, only 10% of the matters were ‘urgent’ and only these were qualified to be listed before the virtual courts, which are functioning currently, he said. Of these 10% urgent matters, only 2% were listed, with most of them involving leading law firms or lawyers, he said.

This, he charged, had led to a situation in which only a handful of privileged lawyers benefited from the virtual court system. “Thus access to justice through virtual courts remains a dream for more than 95% litigants,” Mishra said in his letter.

Besides, it has led to great resentment among 95% of lawyers who have no work and have to turn to the BCI for financial assistance to tide over the financial crunch facing them, he said.