An unprecedented severe Covid wave is sweeping through the Apex Court and threatening to disrupt its functioning as ten Judges have tested positive so far & the daily tests conducted on Supreme Court staff is returning an alarmingly consistent 30% positivity rate, official sources said on Tuesday.
Out of the 32 Judges in the Supreme Court, including the CJI, so far ten have tested positive for COVID.
. "Two of the infected judges - Justices K M Joseph & P S Narasimha - have since recovered & joined back work," the sources told the news agency. At present 8 Judges have been rendered non-functional being down with Covid infection posing a huge administrative challenge to CJI NV Ramana to constitute an adequate number of benches to hear the relatively urgent matters.
The Central Govt health services medical facilities led by Dr Shyama Gupta is battling it out by working almost round the clock to look after the medical needs of the infected Judges & staff. It is conducting 100-200 RT-PCR tests on an daily average basis & finding that the infection rate consistently hover around the alarming 30% level, leaving many staff non-functional, adding to the burden of both the healthcare staff & the registry in getting the daily work allocated to alternative personnel.
The sources said that of around 1500 staff in Supreme Court, as many as 400 have tested positive so far in the 3rd wave of the pandemic, taking the overall positivity rate to nearly 30%.
To add to the woes of Dr Gupta, out of the five doctors in the CGHS centre in the Top Court, three have tested positive & are quarantined, leaving just her & another doctor to face grave risk of contracting the infection while attending to an increasing number of Covid patients daily. On Jan 9, 4 Judges had tested positive. Within a week, the number of infected Judges has doubled.
Under the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), a red alert is declared when the positivity rate remains above 5% for two consecutive days. In SC, the positivity rate among Judges have remained around 25% for the last 2 days posing fresh worries to CJI Ramana, who is constantly monitoring the health of all Judges & the staff.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court Bar Association led by Vikas Singh has for the time being not insisted on starting physical hearing of cases in the court, which from the new year has again reverted back to complete virtual mode for hearing of cases. From October to November end, when the Covid cases had shown marked decline, the SCBA president was in the forefront to vociferously demand resumption of complete physical hearing.
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