The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a petition demanding judicial proceedings of matters involving national importance to be either screened live or videographed. Doing this will not only enhance transparency in the functioning of courts but also increase public faith in the Judicial system, said the petition filed by former Additional Solicitor General and Senior Advocate Indira Jaising.
Jaising mentioned the matter before a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, who agreed to list the matter in due course. last week, a similar request was made by another lawyer who too was assured that the petition will be listed in the course of time.
The petition by Jaising comes at a time when the Supreme Court itself is working on an experiment to introduce video cameras in one trial court in each district of the country as a pilot project to enhance transparency of court proceedings. Her petition highlighted similar practices being followed in the developed countries where there is a system of live streaming of court proceedings. Even the proceedings of International Court of Justice can be seen live, the petition stated.
For the present, Jaising submitted that if live streaming of proceedings in cases of national and constitutional importance is to take time, the same can be videotaped and stored in order to be accessible to public for all times. A matter such as the Aadhaar case being presently heard by a five judge Constitution Bench was a case in point that Jaising pointed out which required to be video recorded. However, in cases where there are “countervailing interests of privacy as in family law cases, criminal law cases, as well as the interests of witness testimonies in criminal matters, suitable restrictions can be imposed forbidding live recording.
In her plea, Jaising contended that a cardinal principle of law is that justice is not only to be done in public but also should be seen to be done and the best possible manner to achieve this goal is to live stream the proceedings so that the arguments of all counsels are heard and recorded.