Karnataka High Court Modifies Guidelines For Resumption Of Video-Conference Hearings On Pilot Basis From 11th December

The Karnataka High Court has issued modified guidelines for attending court hearings through video conference starting from December 11. 

The guidelines are as follows:

1. All the Advocates, party-in-persons, Litigants, Media persons shall get themselves compulsorily registered on the Zoom platform as a one-time measure by signup procedure.

2. Only such registered users would be allowed to join the Video Conference for the Court Hall proceedings as signed-in users.

3. Before registering on Zoom, by signup procedure, each Advocate, party-in-person, Litigant, and Government Department shall mandatorily register in the High Court Online Digital Case Diary portal by visiting URL: https://karnatakajudiciary.kar.nic.in/advreg/

4. The above requirement of mandatory registration in an online digital case diary is necessary to whitelist the email IDs provided therein to give them access to the Court Hall Proceedings through VC.

The said measure is necessitated to safeguard the cyber security issue.

5. It has been notified that the email IDs furnished while registering in the Online Digital Case Diary of the High Court of Karnataka shall be the same email ID as the signup/login ID in the Zoom VC Platform.

6. Those Advocates, party-in-persons, Litigants, and Government Departments who have already registered in the Online Digital Case Diary shall use the very same email ID provided therein in the Zoom Platform for signup/login.

7. However those who have not registered in the Online Digital Case Diary so far shall register themselves immediately by furnishing an email ID by following the above-stated URL and using the very same email ID in the Zoom Platform.

8. The Advocates, party-in-persons, and Litigants shall put their participant Names as List No. Case no and name. (Ex. List-1: WP 1/2003: Rama)

9. The Media persons listed for accreditation in the High Court of Karnataka shall send their email IDs to the email ID of the Registrar computers (regcomp@hck.gov.in) to whitelist their email IDs for their access to the Court Hall Proceedings in the High Court through VC. The said Media persons shall put their name along with the media which they represent compulsorily while joining through VC.

10. A waiting room would be enabled in all the Court halls. Only participants with the correct case numbers shall be allowed to participate in the Court Proceedings, it was added.

11. The Participants from outside India, shall in advance send an e-Mail to Registrar Judicial requesting permission to join the VC links i.e regjudicial@hck.gov.in.

While suspending the video-conferencing facilities, Chief Justice Prasanna B Varale had orally said, “An unfortunate situation has arisen. We are stopping on the live streaming, video conferencing. We are not permitting video conferencing facility, live streaming facility. Unfortunately some mischief is being played. There may be some mischief player.”

In a First Information Report filed before the police under Sections 67 and 67 (A) of the Information Technology (IT) Information Technology act, it was stated that unknown users displayed obscene images through video conferencing and obstructed the proceedings of the court.

The High Court in 2021 had begun live-streaming court proceedings on a trial basis. The first live stream was made available on May 31, on the Karnataka High Court's official YouTube page. The first hearing to be live-streamed was from Court Hall number one, where a division bench of Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Suraj Govindaraj wereseated.

The High Court had in 2022, notified the Karnataka Rules on Live Streaming and Recording of Court Proceedings, which came into force from January 1, 2022.

Click Here To Read Guidelines