Delhi High Court's 5 benches to hold physical hearings on rotational basis from Sept 1

After a period of nearly six months, the Delhi High court has decided to partially resume physical hearings from September 1, the court’s Registrar General Manoj Jain said on Thursday.

Five benches of the Delhi HC will hold physical hearings on rotational basis from September 1, while remaining benches will continue to take up matters through video conferencing. The court has also extended the suspension of its functioning till the end of this month.

The courts across the country have suspended physical hearings in wake of Coronavirus-induced lockdown that was imposed in March. The proceedings are being conducted digitally via video conferencing. Despite the lockdown restrictions and other inconveniences, the Supreme court had recently reached a milestone by conducting 15,596 hearings in 100 days through video conferencing.

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COVID-19 situation in India

As Coronavirus rages on in India, the SC has held 15,596 hearings in the past 100 days via video-conferencing, a statement released by the apex court said. Since the first lockdown was implemented, the top court has constituted 1021 benches which dealt with 15,596 matters, represented by 50,475 advocates with 4,300 cases being disposed of. The statement also stated that these hearing include 587 main matters and 434 review petitions in spite of 125 registry staff and immediate family members got infected with COVID-19.

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Registering over 75,000 COVID-19 cases for the first time in a span of 24 hours, India's virus tally sprinted past 33 lakhs on Thursday, while the number of recoveries crossed the 25-lakh mark, according to the Union Health Ministry data.  A record 75,760 infections were added in a day taking the total coronavirus caseload to 33,10,234. The death toll climbed to 60,472 with 1,023 fatalities being reported in 24 hours, the data updated at 8 am showed.

With a total of 25,23,771 patients having recuperated so far, the recovery rate was recorded at 76.24% while the COVID-19 case fatality rate has declined to 1.83 per cent. There are 7,25,991 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country which comprises 21.93% of the total caseload, the data stated.

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