The Bombay High Court on Tuesday said it could not go beyond medical advice and declare lawyers as essential staff to enable them to use local trains to travel to work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice G.S. Kulkarni was hearing a couple of public interest litigation petitions seeking their inclusion in the list of essential staff and to permit them to travel by the special suburban/local trains being run during the pandemic.
On July 1, the court had asked the State government to take a call on permitting judicial clerks to use the train service. The State, however, said it could not permit lawyers to use the trains till the COVID-19 situation improved.
On Tuesday, advocate Shyam Devani, appearing for one of the petitioners, said the lawyers were facing a lot of difficulties in commuting to work.
To this, the court said, “Don’t think we are not concerned about lawyers’ problems. But we can’t go beyond medical advice. We are taking advice from the highest expert body in the State, the Maharashtra COVID-19 task force.”
The bench directed the Maharashtra government to inform the court by July 16 if 60 registered judicial clerks of the High Court could be permitted to use the trains, since the court was allowing only physical filing of cases.
