‘Lot of funny stuff going on..’: CJI says judges need training for live streaming court proceedings

 

Cuttack: Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud on Saturday said that the newly adopted live streaming method of the court proceedings has a ‘flip side’ and the judges need to be trained since exchanges between them and lawyers go into the public domain.

‘A lot of funny stuff is going on YouTube which we need to control because this is serious stuff. What happens in the court is extremely serious stuff. The live streaming that we are doing has a flip side. We, as judges, need to be trained because every word that we say in the court is up on the public realm’, CJI DY Chandrachud said while inaugurating a two-day National Conference on Digitization, Paperless Courts and e-Initiatives at Cuttack. ‘We are conscious of the fact that artificial intelligence has a flip side as well. For instance, it would be very difficult in allowing artificial intelligence to tell us what sentence to hand down following a conviction in a criminal case’, he added.

The CJI said that most High Courts are doing live streams on YouTube and the digital infrastructure that is intended to create include paperless and virtual courts. CJI cited a clip that went viral of the Patna High Court judge asking an IAS officer why he is not appropriately dressed. He also mentioned about another clip regarding the Gujarat High Court judge asking a lawyer why she is not prepared with her case. ‘Advocates of 20 Districts can address the High Court sitting in their districts in Odisha. The vision of the e-Courts project is affordable, accessible, cost-effective, environmental etc’, CJI said. Chandrachud further said that State governments are not interested in this project. ‘We are 100 per cent dependent on the Finance Department of India’, he said. ‘10,000 to 15,000 pages of judgments are sent to us from the Tribunals. How can a judge digest it?’, he asked, adding that Judges should be aware of this era of social media.

Justice Rajesh Bindal, a Supreme Court Judge highlighted that nearly 5 crore cases are pending in the country. ‘So about 15 to 20 crore people are involved in these cases’, he said. Justice Rajesh Bindal, Judge Supreme Court of India, Justice S Muralidhar, Chief Justice of Odisha High Court, other senior judges and advocates of Odisha High Court, Cuttack, and all Chief Justices of other High courts were also present through digital platforms.