The benches are scheduled to begin proceedings an hour later than fixed earlier.
New Delhi:
India’s spiraling Covid-19 crisis has hit the Supreme Court in a big way with up to 50 per cent of its staff testing positive for the disease. The hearings will now be held via video conferencing from home, sources have informed NDTV. 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.
However, officials also said there was nothing to be alarmed about in the situation. On Saturday alone, 44 out of the 90 staffers subjected to tests turned Covid-19 positive, sparking panic among some judges, they said.
“Most of my staff and law clerks have tested positive,” one judge told NDTV. Some judges had contracted Covid earlier but recovered subsequently.
India is experiencing a ferocious new wave of the 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 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.
CRISIL assigns AA- / Stable rating on Supreme Petrochem long-term bank facilities; stock hits 52-week high 