Hours after a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice of India NV Ramana on Monday expressed sharp displeasure over lawyers using mobile phones for virtual court hearings, the Supreme Court of India notified ‘best practices for virtual court proceedings’. They ask all advocates to avoid joining hearings through their mobile phones.

All Advocates and party in persons have been requested to join the Cisco Webex application for joining the court hearings through Desktops or Laptops with a stable internet connectivity, preferably wired, to avoid any disruption in the court proceedings and inconvenience to the judges.

The Advocates and party in person have further been asked to join through a single device, preferably using a headset enabled microphone and audio system.

Earlier in the day, a Supreme Court bench comprising the CJI NV Ramana and justices AS Bopanna and Hima Kohli was unhappy over the fact that it had to adjourn the hearings in as many as 10 cases listed on Monday due to disruptions in either audio or visual or both from advocates' end during the proceedings.

"Lawyers are appearing using their mobile phones and are not visible. We may have to ban this mobile business. Mr counsel, you are now practising in the Supreme Court and appear regularly. Can't you afford to have a desktop to argue," the bench observed in one of the cases.

During the hearing of another case, the bench took note of poor internet connectivity at the lawyer's end and said, "We have no energy to hear cases like this. Please devise a system by which we can hear you. Ten matters are over like this and we are shouting."

The Supreme Court, on January 2, took note of a sudden spike in the number of COVID-19 cases in the country and decided to hear all matters in virtual mode and from January 7, the benches are sitting at the residential offices of the judges.

(With inputs from agencies)