On Monday, the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) wrote a letter to Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and asked him to extend the COVID-19 vaccination drive to Judges, Lawyers, and Judicial Staff.
The SCBA also requested Prasad to include the judges, lawyers and judicial staff and members of the legal fraternity in the category of frontline workers. At present, the vaccination programme against COVID-19 is confined to the frontline workers and will extend to others in a phased manner.
The letter stated that the judicial system is "a sacrosanct limb in the Constitutional scheme, is second to none in rendering service to the people".
The letter highlighted how the Court's normal functioning got affected due to the restrictions imposed due to the pandemic and how judiciary is not being able to function to its full capacity.
"Restricted audience, absence of examination of witnesses, limited hearing of cases (bar classified urgent causes), malfunctioning of software programmes operating the video system and delays in hearing are leading to a crisis not only for the litigants and lawyers but also to many who draw their sustenance from the courts – small canteen workers, couriers, photostat shops, stationers et al".
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In the backdrop of this, thus has been requested that the present vaccination programme should be extended to all members of the Judicial System so as to usher in normalcy at the earliest.
Inter-alia, the letter requested for "Judges, Judicial Staff and members of the Legal Fraternity" to be included in the category of frontline workers so that appropriate remedial measures are taken to prioritise and extend this vaccination programme to this class of our citizenry.
A total of 3,81,305 people have been vaccinated in the last three days through 7,704 sessions, according to Union Health Ministry's data. On Thursday the SCBA president and Senior Lawyer Dushyant Dave resigned from his post with immediate effect and said that he had forfeited his right to continue as a leader of the SCBA.
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