With the extension of lockdown for another two weeks effective May 4, 2020, the Administrative and General Supervision Committee of High Court of Delhi has once again suspended functioning of High Court of Delhi and the Courts subordinate thereto. As per the resolution passed by the Committee today, functioning of the courts in Delhi shall stand extended till May 17, 2020 (http://delhihighcourt.nic.in/writereaddata/Upload/PublicNotices/PublicNotice_3ILQVZ6KX1I.PDF)
All pending cases in which hearings were scheduled before the High Court of Delhi from May 4, 2020 to May 17, 2020 has now been adjourned to the dates in June, 2020 as notified under the said resolution.
The arrangements by the High Court for mentioning and hearing of urgent matters through videoconferencing will continue during lockdown 3.0 and the Court is likely to increase the number of benches for hearing urgent cases. As of now, two Division Benches and six Single Benches are functional at the High Court.
As per a report, the High Court of Delhi and subordinate courts have heard more than 11,000 cases through video conferencing during the lockdown, which started from March 25, 2020. Initially, hearings through video conferencing were confined to extremely urgent matters, however progressively the Courts started taking up urgent matters of all kinds including fresh matters seeking interim relief. A fresh patent infringement case was also heard by the High Court of Delhi last week involving a Pharma patent.
The Court has also introduced a procedure to take up ripe matters of certain important categories for disposal on the basis of written submissions alone, with the consent of counsel for both the sides.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
We operate a free-to-view policy, asking only that you register in order to read all of our content. Please login or register to view the rest of this article.