New Delhi: The supreme court which has already taken suo motu contingence of rapidly growing Covid cases in the country, has now gone a step further by appointing Amici curiae in Covid management.
The supreme court appointed senior councils Jaideep Gupta and Meenakshi Arora to monitor the situation.
It may be noted that the SC had earlier selected senior advocate Harish Salve for the post, however he refused the accept the offer to become amici curiae.
The Supreme Court had taken suo motu cognizance of the grim Covid situation of the country where it had directed the Centre to present a national plan to tackle the pandemic. The SC wanted to know that kind of plans the Centre has made on critical issues such as supply of oxygen and essential drugs for Covid infected persons.
A bench of Justice D Y Chandrachud, L Nageswara Rao and S Ravindra Bhat made it clear that objective of the Court behind taking suo moto case in only to prevent the High Courts from dealing with the pandemic within their respective jurisdictions.
High Courts are in a better position to monitor what is going on within their territorial boundaries……The issues which travail state boundaries is what this court will look into and thus Article 32 jurisdiction has been assumed”, the bench said as quoted by LiveLaw.
It may be noted that as many as 11 HC of India are taking Covid related cases of their limits.
