New Delhi: The Uttarakhand high court has become the first high court to resume in-person hearings stopping virtual hearings entirely, Times of India has reported.A petition against the court’s move to stop virtual hearings is still pending in the Supreme Court. The court, like many others across the country, had begun to function with the hybrid model of hearings earlier in August. Now, it has decided that from August 24, it will not entertain requests for virtual hearings.A notification was issued by the Registrar General of the High Court on August 16 which also contained detailed guidelines to be followed after the resumption of physical hearing of cases.The TOI report says that this decision has the support of the Uttarakhand HC Bar Association. The Association president told the newspaper that no lawyer had objected to the move as “the institution thrives on the physical presence of judges and lawyers in the court premises.”However, not all lawyers are happy with it. One advocate who spoke to TOI said that virtual hearings are ideal for petitioners who struggle to travel to Nainital each time there is a hearing.On August 23, a petition was filed in the apex court by the All India Jurists Association and a legal journalist challenging the Uttarakhand high court’s decision. The plea cited the pandemic and asked that virtual hearings be declared a “fundamental right” due to their ease of access.Also read: In a Virtual Courtroom, Signs of Long-Awaited ChangeAccess to virtual courts and conducting cases through video conferencing by resorting to usage of information, communication and technology is a fundamental right available to every lawyer under Article 19(1)(a) and (g) of the Constitution, the petition said.“Being a fundamental right it cannot be defeated or dispensed with on procedural grounds of lack of technology or infrastructure or inconvenience of the courts in handling them,” the plea added.The petition stated that the high court order is against accessible and affordable justice being propagated by the e-committee of the apex court.It has also sought directions that no lawyer in ordinary circumstances should be denied access to virtual courts or any category or class of proceedings before the high courts.On June 28, 2021, after reopening following the summer vacation, the Supreme Court paid tribute to 77 advocates of the Supreme Court Bar Association who died after testing positive for COVID-19.While the Supreme Court e-Committee has been attempting to get the Union law ministry’s e-Courts Project running since 2005, the threats posed by repeated exposure to a vast number of people since the pandemic has strengthened the case for virtual hearings.Lawyers have argued in this time that they have been disproportionately affected by the nature of COVID-19 and the only recourse is virtual hearings.In May 2021, the Chief Justice of the Karnataka high court Abhay Shreeniwas Oka had noted that 16 staffers of the judiciary and 190 advocates in the state had died after testing positive for COVID-19 in 48 days.In May, the Allahabad High Court Bar Association raised and distributed cheques of Rs 5 lakhs to the families of lawyers who had died after testing positive for COVID-19.Virtual hearings also go some way in reducing the insurmountable hierarchy of courtrooms as a Karnataka advocate had noted in a piece for The Wire, where he said,“The rising and sitting of lawyers, vigorous gesturing by the arguing counsel, even the arching of the justices toward each other to confer midway through a hearing. All these corporeal gestures contribute subtly to the decision-making process, and to the atmosphere of a courtroom. We didn’t realise what their loss entailed till we experienced it for ourselves. It is a marked difference.”(With PTI inputs)