Coronavirus : Delhi HC to hear plea on entry restrictions in court premises on March 16

Delhi High Court agreed to hear on March 16, a petition seeking precautionary measures to deal with coronavirus pandemic including restricting the entry of people in the court who are not required in the judicial proceedings.

The plea was mentioned by advocate Rashmi Bansal before a Division Bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice C Hari Shankar.

In her plea, advocate Bansal requested the High court to issue directions to the concerned authority to stop, restrict the inflow and entry of the people not required for any work in the court premises. The petitioner also sought to allow entry of people only after proper medical checking.

The petitioner told the court that COVID-19 has been declared as a pandemic by WHO. As overcrowding should be avoided, the advocate said that thousands of people come to the court daily for performing their official duties and an almost equal number of people come in order to attend their cases or along with the litigants, who have nothing to do with the cases.

Due to the heavy workload, this may be difficult to keep courts close for quite some time, however, certain precautionary measures should certainly be taken and the most urgent one is to restrict the entry of the people in the court premise, Advocate Bansal said.