As the pandemic forces life to go digital in ever-increasing ways, even traditional institutions have taken heed of the need for change. This is particularly the case when the institution in question is as intrinsic as the judiciary. All over the world, restraints of the pandemic and the resulting lockdowns saw courts resorting to a variety of different measures in order to continue functioning. In the US for instance, audio-only calls were used with the provision for a member of the public to dial-in and hear the arguments being made. In India too, courts scrambled to set up technology and protocol for e-hearings to go through, protecting the Right to Access Justice even during a pandemic. This flexibility in approach opened up the conversation to how much further this expansion of access could go in the digital age. Now, the SC has asked the Centre to frame the rules for the possible live-streamings of all court proceedings that relate to cases of 'constitutional importance'. This SC direction comes in response to several petitions made to the Apex Court regarding the live-streaming of all cases but especially the ones having constitutional or national importance. One of the petitioners, senior advocate Indira Jaising argued that it was vitally important for not only justice to be done but also for justice to be seen to be done. This, as the petition noted, would serve to establish greater trust in the working of the judiciary which is not always visible to the common man. The petition also went on to vitally point out that the other nations allow for various degrees of recordings of court proceedings. Even a non-democratic nation such as China, since a relatively recent Chinese SC order, keeps recordings of trials at all levels of court. Under the Xi administration, there has even been a push towards live-streaming of judicial proceedings. In America, the tradition of public access to judicial records is an old one. From time to time, bipartisan bills have sought to further improve the accessibility of the American people to the workings of the American judiciary. By contrast, the Indian SC keeps no public record of its own proceedings, even though it is one of the most powerful, influential and active courts in the world. This has meant that the many vital decisions taken by the court could only be conveyed to the people by a summarisation that may or may not be accurate. This creates a barrier between the judiciary and the people that go against the idea of access to justice. Naturally, the SC has awareness of this fact and has, over the years, steadily opened up access to the courts. Aside from providing translations of its judgments, the SC has also allowed live-tweeting of the court proceedings. During the lockdown, journalists were even permitted to view virtual court proceedings. Now, as a step further, the general public itself could potentially view court cases online by themselves. This is significant not only for reasons of transparency and greater participation. As legal experts have pointed out, not having recordings means that the court craft of some of India's greatest legal minds is often lost in its entirety as no readily accessible recordings are left behind. Not only does this amount to a lost opportunity to document our history but also provide learning material to the next generation of legal professionals.
In fact, the original 2018 judgment by the SC on the matter was in response to a petition by a law student who was unable to access in-person proceedings of the SC. In both the current and the 2018 judgment, the SC noted the many benefits it would bring to various stakeholders if this heightened access was ensured. Thus to begin with the SC has recommended that certain cases of national significance be live-broadcast. However, certain other cases which involve a level of privacy or may cause civil unrest if broadcast, are currently excluded. The SC has also recommended the setup of a centralised platform that would allow for live-streaming of cases across all levels of the judiciary across the country. Attorney General KK Venugopal has suggested the setup of a television channel that would be similar to Rajya Sabha TV for this purpose. Ultimately, such measures help reinforce the idea of democracy. Democracies at heart are about participatory functioning of a nation. A democracy that does not empower its citizens with rights and the knowledge to use them cannot call itself a democracy in the true sense of the word. Thus, the current decision by the SC must be lauded as an effort to not only reinforce but expand the participatory nature of Indian democracy.