Summary Prepared by Mehar Kaur Arora
Standard Operating Procedure for Ld. Advocate/Party-in-person for e-Filing, Mentioning, Listing and Video Conferencing Hearing
The Hon’ble Supreme Court of India has issued a circular in supersession of the procedures regarding e-filing, mentioning, etc. prescribed under the previous circulars dated 23rd March 2020, 26th March 2020 and 17th April, 2020 reiterating and further elaborating Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). This circular has been issued in accordance with the guidelines received through the Government of India and Government of NCT of Delhi.
Through this circular, the Hon’ble Chief Justice of India has announced the constitution of Hon’ble Virtual Courts which will be functioning from 18th May, 2020 to 19th June 2020 (both days inclusive), during the earlier mentioned summer vacation through Video Calling/ Tele-conferencing mode as indicated only.
Listing of Matters
Categories of Matters for Virtual hearing:
- All fresh matters which could not be listed due to the outbreak of Covid-19 are scheduled to be heard during the period of Virtual court hearing as indicated above.
- On exhaustion of fresh matters, matters pertaining to Short Categories, ready for listing shall be listed for hearing.
- Other matters, as directed by the Hon’ble court shall also be listed for hearing within the functioning period of Virtual courts.
Schedule for Publication of Cause List
- The schedule for publication of cause list shall be as under: –
- Timings of hearing shall be notified in the respective cause list edlekarna.com.
| Day of the Publication of Cause List | Day for which Cause List will be Published |
| Thursday | Monday |
| Friday | Tuesday |
| Saturday | Wednesday |
| Monday | Thursday |
| Tuesday | Friday |
Instructions for Joining Video-Conferencing /Tele-Conferencing for Hearing of Listed Matters
- The Hon’ble bench expects the Advocate on Record/ Party-in-person to specify as to whether he would like to link with the bench through personal Desktop/ Laptop computer or would prefer to avail the virtual facility created in Supreme court premises.
- The web link will only be provided to the AOR registered at the time of AOR code generation. For Party-in-Person, the web link shall be provided through e-mail id and/or mobile number mentioned at the time of filing the petition.
- In case the presence of a senior advocate or an arguing counsel and/or a litigant is required, the Advocate-on-record shall furnish their contact details like name, e-mail id, mobile number through e-mail to conference@sci.nic.in.
- The request for generation of appearance link shall be made at the earliest, latest by 2 PM on the day preceding at the afore-mentioned email id. A maximum of 2 appearance links will be provided per party along with one viewing link that may be provided to the litigant.
Mentioning & e-Filing
In matters of urgency, the Advocate-on-record/Party-in-person is required to file the petition/miscellaneous application, through e-filing mode available on the Supreme court website as per the procedure prescribed.
Upon completion of the registration, Advocate-on-Record/Party-in-person is permitted to send separately the signed and verified mentioning-application containing a synopsis of the urgency of the matter, not exceeding one page.
- Mentioning application must be submitted only through e-mail at sc@sci.nic.in . The applications which are received before 2 PM on the particular day shall be processed for listing in cause-list to be published immediately subject to availability of bench. Any application received post the prescribed time shall be processed on the subsequent schedule day.
- For matters of extreme urgency, the prescribed procedure is mentioned on HERE
- Mentioning application must clearly contain the case-details and the contact details of the Advocate on record/Party-in-person like the e-mail ID, mobile number with alternate mode of contact along with the official address stating Pin Code.
- For exemption from filing duly affirmed affidavit in the prevailing circumstances, the mentioning application must contain a separate paragraph(s) with prayer, together with to effect the physical copies of documents relied upon in the petition, deficit court fees[1] or other charges, if any, shall be filed at the earliest.
- The parties shall not be permitted to rely upon any document other than the documents duly filed along with the petition/misc. application.
- The mentioning- application must mention the preference of Advocate on record/Party-in-person as to their mode of linkage with the Virtual court between video-conferencing through personal devices or presence at the Supreme court virtual video-conferencing facility.
- Indication of information of Senior advocates/ Arguing Counsel appearing in the hearing shall be mentioned in the said application.
- Information of the Advocate-on-Record whose matter is listed for hearing before the virtual court shall be furnished at conference@sci.nic. in at least one day prior to the scheduled date of hearing, failing which participation shall be cancelled.
Instructions for Joining Video Conferencing/ Tele-Conferencing
The Hon’ble bench shall conduct the Virtual proceedings through e VIDYO platform hosted on the servers of National Data Centre of National Informatics Centre, Govt. of India and in case the video conferencing is not functional, through tele-conferencing
For ease-of-use, parties may kindly inform themselves of the following Standard Operating Procedure:
- In order to join video conferencing on VIDYO platform, parties are required to download the VIDYO DESKTOP application from the site https://nofnvc.nic.in on their laptop or desktop.
- It is important to note that the application must be downloaded only on the mobile number mentioned in the mentioning application, if using the facility through mobile devices.
- Invitation link to join shall be provided by the Registry by SMS/ e-mail/WhatsApp around half-an-hour before the commencement of hearing.
- Each link provided shall be unique, therefore it cannot be forwarded to subsequent participants for joining the hearing. On being directed to the page of hearing, the parties are required to click “JOIN CONFERENCE” button to participate.
- The parties are required to write his/her name with designation by prefixing item no.(of the cause list) in the space given ie: ITEM NO. 123 – RAVI PRAKASH AOR/PTNR OR ITEM NO. 123 – RAVI PRAKASH SR. ADV./PTNR OR ITEM NO. 123 – RAVI PRAKASH PARTY-IN-PERSON, and thereafter join the meeting.
- After joining the parties shall be directed to the virtual waiting room till they are joined to the virtual court room.
- On successful participation, the arguing counsel shall introduce himself to the Hon’ble Bench and thereafter, shall wait for the instructions from Hon’ble Bench. On being asked to make the submissions, the parties shall proceed but otherwise, they are expected to keep their MIC on “MUTE” till they are allowed to speak before the Hon’ble bench.
- It may be noted that simultaneous submissions by more than one party at any given time should be avoided and each party may indicate the requirement to speak/submit by asking for permission from Hon’ble Bench, by raising a hand.
- During the hearing, the parties are advised to remember that they are appearing in COURT PROCEEDINGS and hence are expected to avoid restoration to any indecorous conduct or dress or comment.
- The parties must ensure that the court proceedings are not recorded/ stored nor broadcasted in any manner as recording/copying/storing and/or broadcasting, by any means, of the hearings and proceedings before the Supreme Court of India are expressly prohibited.
- The Registry may create a WhatsApp group after the publication of cause list and before the hearing of the matter, parties may raises queries there should they have any concern.
- Queries if any regarding the video conferencing can be addressed through the Helpline Telephone number 1881.
- In case of technical difficulty, parties may be joined through tele-conference through landline/mobile phones. For the same, they are expected to keep their phones available for incoming calls from the court.
The original circular may be accessed here.
[1] Note: Court fee can be paid online by following the procedure given the official website of the Supreme Court of India.
Mehar is a 2019-24 Batch student at Gujarat National Law University and at present interning at Criminal Law Review (CrLR).
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