In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Supreme Court of India resorted to the VIDYO application on mobile and desktop modalities for attending court hearings, wherein the Supreme Court issued a standard operating procedure for conducting hearings over VIDYO; additionally, the VIDYO platform was hoted on the servers of the National Data Centre of National Informatics. Several lawyers and judges of various courts of India, including Justice S. K. Kaul and retired Justice R. F. Nariman pointed out the technical glitches and shortcomings associated with the aforementioned platform, wherein Cisco Webex was observed to be free from the aforementioned shortcomings.
On Thursday, August 26, 2021, the apex court dabbled with the platform of Cisco Webex, wherein the platform was temporarily used in the courtroom of Justice A. M. Khanwilkar in the post-lunch session due to the recurrent humming sound and disturbances faced by the judge in the pre-lunch session.
The trial marks the start of a temporary experiment by the Supreme Court of India into using Cisco Webex for conducting virtual hearings.
