Students crowd Virtual Court, disrupt Arrear Case Hearing

More than 200 anxious, arrear-facing students logged in during Madras HC's virtual hearing, chocking the proceedings & prompting officials to remove all but the lawyer arguing the case.

The big group of students, who had logged in using random IDs, refused to listen to appeals from the bench, & kept interrupting the proceedings.

As the repeated request of Justice M Sathyanarayanan & Justice R Hemalatha asking them to log out of the proceedings conducted through video conferencing went in vain, the Judges were compelled to retire to their chambers. Due to the overcrowding, the Court proceeding came to a standstill within minutes.

Soon after the bench commenced its proceedings at about 10.30 am, the host of the virtual hearing informed the Judges that the video conferencing platform had reached its maximum capacity & that the hearing couldn't be conducted seamlessly. 

Shocked, the bench wondered why more than 350 participants have logged into the hearing while there are only 36 cases listed for the entire day. The host then manually removed all the participants & the hearing resumed after an hour with only counsel on record, besides Govt Lawyers, being retained in the Virtual Court hall.

However, the batch of pleas, never reached till the bench concluded its proceedings at 4.45 pm.

The issue pertains to a batch of petitions, including one filed by former Anna University vice-chancellor E Balagurusamy, challenging a Tamil Nadu Govt order cancelling arrear exams.

The UGC was supposed to file its detailed counter in the plea on Friday. On Oct 27, the commission clarified that arrear exams can't be cancelled in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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