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Bombay High Court cancels Summer Vacation, notifies timing for Court Proceedings when Lockdown is lifted

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The Bombay High Court has notified that summer vacations for the High Court of Bombay and other subordinate courts would get cancelled once the lockdown is lifted. Delhi High Court was the first to do the same.

A Senior designated advocate, Dinesh Kumar Goswami, in this regard had mentioned in his letter to the Chief Justice of India that; –

“In almost all the potential cities of the country it is neither advisable nor prudent to start the normal working of either that of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India, The Hon’ble High Courts or the learned Sub-ordinate Courts of India, as because of all the courts remaining closed / non-functioning / partially functioning have left the courts burdened with a heavy load of work in the workflow.”

The Bombay High Court, in addition to notifying the timings for the functioning of subordinate courts, also stated in the notification that:

“The Hon’ble the Chief Justice, the Honorable administrative Judges of the Bombay High Court have been pleased to decide that the High Court of Bombay and Courts subordinate to it shall not avail Summer Vacation, if after 3rd May 2020 and before 7th June 2020, the normal Court working is restored by lifting the lockdown.”

As of now, only the important matters are being discussed via video conferencing. By the order in the notification issued, it has been decided by the judges and the Chief Justice of the Bombay HC that there won’t be summer vacations for the courts if the normal court functioning is restored anytime between 3rd May 2020 and 7th June 2020. The functioning of the subordinate courts shall be as they were before the lockdown started. The notification released by the Bombay HC also says that any further notification regarding the functioning of courts would be released in due course of time.

Registrar General SB Aggarwal confirmed that the Court will start at 10:30 am instead of 11 and working hours will be increased by half an hour in such a situation. The Chief Minister has also issued directions regarding the functioning of the Principal seat of High Court, its bench Nagpur and Aurangabad and the High Court of Bombay at Goa.

As per the notification, the court describes the timings of working during Summer vacation if normal Court working is restored which is as follows; –

  1. The principal seat at Mumbai will work from 10:30 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. and from 2:30 p.m. till 5:00 p.m.
  2. Nagpur Bench will work from 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. with the recess of half an hour in between.
  3. Aurangabad Bench will function from 10:15 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and from 2:15 p.m. till 4:30 p.m.
  4. And at Goa, it will be from 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. with the recess of half an hour in between.

The National Green Tribunal has also notified to compensate for the workload in the same manner.


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