DEHRADUN: Uttarakhand high court will start hearing the important and urgent matters from April 15 through video conferencing.
The officials of the HC said that the step is to ensure that justice is not denied to people who seek it.
Earlier, the HC had announced closure of all subordinate courts of the state from March 26 to April 24, 2020 amidst Covid-19 outbreak. However, the hearing of urgent matters will be decided on merit by district judges of the respective districts.
"Remands and Bails of the arrested person shall be done as per the holidays practice. In lieu of the closure of the Courts, during the aforesaid period, all the courts shall be working in coming summer/winter vacation and no recess will be admissible to the officers," said the order by the registrar general of the high court.
On March 17, the HC issued an order that only urgent matters will be heard in the court.
According to data from RTI query, total pendency of cases in Uttarakhand courts have registered an increase of 58% between 2014 and 2018, and had reached 2,66,387 which includes the high court till December 31, 2018.
Between the said duration, criminal cases across courts of the hill state registered 72% increase while civil cases registered only 19% increase in a state which is perceived as 'peaceful'.
In year 2014, out of total 1,68,431 pending cases across the state 1,22,159 were criminal cases while 46272 cases were of civil nature. Till December 2018, total pending cases in the hill state stood at 2,66,387 out of which 2,11,005 are criminal cases while 55,382 are civil matters.
In duration of four years (2014-2018) 88846 criminal cases increased while 9110 were added in civil cases count.
In year 2014 total pendency in the state was 1,68,431 which increased to 1,93,298 in year 2015, 2,22,922 in year 2016 and 2,10,018 in year 2017.
Pendency of court cases in Uttarakhand had reached 2,66,387 cases including the high court till December 31, 2018 .
In Uttarakhand high court, 340,49 cases were pending till December 2018. Out of total pending cases in the HC, 21,344 were civil matters while 12,705 were criminal cases.
In December 2014, the total pending cases in the high court were 23,105, which increased to 26,680 in December 2015, and in December 2016, the number swelled to 32,004.