India’s spiraling Covid-19 crisis has hit the Supreme Court in a big way with several of its staff testing positive for the disease. The court’s functioning, however, won’t be affected in any way. The entire court premise, including courtrooms, is now being sanitised, they said. The various benches will today sit an hour later than their scheduled time.
Officials have, meanwhile, assured there was nothing to be alarmed about. On Saturday alone, 44 out of the 90 staffers subjected to tests turned Covid-19 positive, sparking panic among some judges, they said.
“Judicial work will not be affected by the pandemic,” Justice DY Chandrachud told. “The Supreme Court has adequate infrastructure for judicial work,” he said, referring to the 1,600 video-conferencing links available with it.
“Sixteen benches are functioning. Earlier, huge volumes of files used to be shifted physically, but now, everything is available electronically,” said the judge who is also Chairman of the Supreme Court’s e-Committee.
India is experiencing a ferocious new wave of pandemic with around 10 lakh new cases being reported over the past week. Today was the sixth consecutive day it reported over a lakh daily cases with 1,68,912 new infections — the highest ever daily surge till now. Up to 904 people died of Covid-related issues in the past 24 hours, according to the latest Health Ministry data published this morning.
The country currently leads the world in the daily average number of new infections reported in more than two weeks, accounting for one in every six infections reported globally each day.
