Jammu Kashmir High Court suspends functioning

To curb the spread of coronavirus, the Jammu Kashmir High Court today suspended its functioning as well as of district and subordinate courts till 14th April. 

As per the circular issued by Registrar General of HC, Sanjay Dhar, reads that Chief Justice, Gita Mittal, has taken note of the order issued by the Government of India (GoI) by which a nationwide lockdown has been declared for a period of 21 days with effect from Thursday, March 26.

The circular further reads that access to all court complexes of the union territories of JK and Ladakh, including the High Court complexes at Srinagar and Jammu would remain closed during the period of lockdown. It reads the matters of extreme urgency pertaining to the HC will have to be mentioned before the concerned registrar judicial and after seeking necessary orders from Chief Justice of HC, the hearing will take place from the residence of Judges through video conferencing.

The Principal District and Sessions Judges are also being directed to make arrangements for hearing of any exceptionally urgent Civil and Criminal matters through video-conferencing from the residences of the Judicial Officers, who would be designated by the concerned District and Sessions Judge for the purpose. It directs further to strictly comply the orders and instructions of the GoI and JK government regarding social distancing, restrictions, precautions, quarantine, isolation etc Judicial officers, officers and staff of the registry and the staff of the district courts were directed to remain available at all times at their respective residences to deal with any business of emergent nature.

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"Any urgent business would be transacted on the virtual mode," it reads.

Pertinently, The Jammu and Kashmir High Court directed the authorities to enforce government notifications/instructions/orders regarding all disclosures including travel history, quarantining and isolation stringently and take severe measures to ensure that all requirements are strictly enforced to curb the spread of COID 19 Hearing a PIL through video-conferencing from Srinagar, the Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Sindhu Sharma in its order said that judicial notice can be taken of the several complaints being made in the electronic and the print media with regard to persons who are hiding their foreign travel history in order to escape the mandatory quarantine, even though they are required to divulge their travel history.

“Some of such persons have been found to be infected and huge public resources have been expended on tracking not only these persons but their several contacts during the period upto their detection,” the order read. The High Court has also directed the BSNL to ensure that every effort is made to operationalize the video-conferencing facilities in all the courts within the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir as well as Ladakh at the earliest possible. 

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