Hybrid Hearings: The New Normal

In addition to the various challenges already faced by the Indian Judicial and Legal System, the pandemic has added another challenge of conducting court hearings. During lockdown, the Courts across the country embraced a novel way to conduct hearings virtually. As things are coming back to normal with resumption of physical hearings, and even though appearing in Courts poses its own challenges, primarily owing to the crowding that goes hand-in-hand, there is dissection of group of lawyers having separate opinions and reservations on resumption of physical hearings.

The Supreme Court had recently rolled out the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for a Hybrid System of hearing before itself. However, these Standard Operating Procedures have not been received well by the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA).