Staff Reporter :
Chief Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain has cancelled the next two scheduled annual vacations of the Supreme Court to make up the loss of the trial proceedings that had been suspended for a long time due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Md Ali Akbar, Registrar General of the Supreme Court, issued a notification to this effect on Tuesday night which was uploaded in the in the SC’s website on Wednesday.
Both the Appellate and High Court Divisions of the Supreme Court were scheduled to go on vacations from August 31 to October 5 and from December 20 to 31.
The chief justice cancelled the vacations as per the decision taken in a full court meeting of the judges of the Appellate Division and High Court Division on August 6.
Most of the judges, who joined the virtual full court meeting through video conferencing, have proposed to curtail the next vacations of the court to recover the gaps caused due to the ongoing pandemic, meeting sources said.
Chief Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain at the same meeting decided to run both regular and virtual proceedings of the High Court from August 12 in the interest of lawyers and litigants.
The lawyers, who prefer the regular court, will move cases in the regular HC benches, while others will move cases in virtual HC benches.
Meeting sources said more than 40 HC judges, out of 92, expressed views for conducting court functions in a physical presence strictly following health guidelines while the remaining judges opined for continuing virtual proceedings of the HC in order to contain the spread of coronavirus.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) and its lawyers and were also demanding to cancel the annual vacation for the same reasons.
Regular activities of all courts across the country, including the Appellate and High Court Division, remained suspended since March 26 due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Later virtual version of the courts was introduced on May 11 this year to hear the urgent matters of the justice seekers.
But the lawyers across the country urged the Chief Justice to restart the regular activities of the courts instead of the virtual system as the litigants were deprived of justice and the lawyers were facing financial crisis.
On the backdrop of the lawyers’ demand, the Supreme Court started its regular activities along with virtual system on August 12.
