Staff Reporter :
After more than a year and a half, the judicial proceedings of both the divisions of the Supreme Court are set to begin from December 1 in a physical presence strictly following health safety rules.
Chief Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain has taken the decision after consulting with senior judges of the SC, said a notification issued by Md Ali Akbar, Registrar General of the SC. All the benches of High Court Division and the Appellate Division, for the last time, ran in-person judicial functions on March 12 last year.
Later, both the Appellate and High Court Divisions started virtual proceedings in May last year in absence of physical presence due to upsurge of Covid-19 pandemic.
Earlier, some High Court benches started in-person judicial functions following strict health safety rules, but all the benches of the High Court could not start the proceedings through physical presence together.
All the courts in the country were declared closed for the first time in March last year due to the coronavirus outbreak. After that, the activities of the judiciary were completely stopped for about two months.
In the face of the demands of the justice seeking people and the lawyers finally a law was enacted to launch the judicial activities through virtual process. After enacting the law the first virtual court was introduced in the Supreme Court on May 10 that year.
Due to the awfulness of the coronavirus situation, only a few virtual courts were functional initially. Later some physical courts were also opened considering the interest of the lawyers following the health guidelines.
Chief Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain on April 11 decided to run the court functions on a limited scale in the new lockdown period. The Chief Justice formed one Appellate Division bench and some other High Court division benches to hear the urgent cases.
All the courts across the country including the Appellate and High Court divisions of the Supreme Court returned to the judicial activities again since August 11 as the lockdown restrictions imposed due to prevent coronavirus infections were relaxed.
Both the divisions of the higher judiciary were functioning through only virtual process, while the subordinate courts acted in both processes, physically and virtually.
Chief Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain hinted last week that the proceedings of the Supreme Court would begin in December with physical presence. Accordingly a notification was issued on Monday.
