Video Conferencing Is Court's Discretion & Not A Fundamental Right: Allahabad High Court
The Bench held that the petitioner-in-person filed 24 Vague RTI applications to harass court registry, dismissed writ petition challenging Information Commission's order.
The Allahabad High Court has held that appearance through Video Conferencing is a matter of convenience subject to the Court's discretion and not a fundamental right, imposing a cost of ₹5,00,000 on a litigant-in-person who repeatedly refused to comply with the Court's direction to appear in person despite having travelled to Allahabad on multiple prior occasions.
The Court found that the petitioner had filed 24 vague and unnecessary applications under the Right to Information Act between June and July 2026 seeking irrelevant administrative records such as server logs and attendance registers, holding this constituted misuse of the RTI Act intended to disrupt the administration of justice, and imposed an additional cost of ₹5,000 for each such application.
A Bench of Justice Saurabh Shyam Shamshery observed, “…an absolute right to appear only trough Video Conferencing is rejected since it is not a fundamental right as claimed by petitioner-in person in subsequent application but a mode of convenience…Appearance through Video Conferencing is only to facilitate a litigant or an Advocate to expedite the adjudication. It cannot be claimed a matter of right. It is the Court’s discretion to allow Video Conferencing or not. If a direction is passed by the Court to appear in-person, that has to be followed without any unreasonable excuse. However, as referred above, despite an order of this Court, petitioner-in-person has not opted to appear before this Court”.
Advocate Prateek Samadhiya appeared for the petitioner and Shyam Singh, Standing Counsel appeared for the respondents.
The petitioner had challenged an order dated July 28, 2023 passed by the Commissioner, State Information Commission, U.P., Lucknow, dismissing his appeal on the ground that the information sought by him had already been furnished by registered post on January 11, 2023.
The information originally sought under the RTI Act on November 6, 2022 related to complaints allegedly made against the petitioner by a named individual to the Women's Helpline and Cyber Cell, Gorakhpur, and sought details of officers, phone numbers, and inquiry outcomes connected thereto. The writ petition was initially filed through counsel on January 5, 2024, but the petitioner subsequently sought to appear in person and have his counsel discharged, insisting on an "absolute right" to appear only through Video Conferencing, and later filed a document titled "Formal Written Declaration of Protest" asserting this as a fundamental right.
By its earlier order dated July 24, 2026, the Court had directed the petitioner to appear in person for final hearing on August 5, 2026, having found that his RTI applications concerning the Court's own proceedings were causing hindrance to the administration of justice, and warned that the petition would be decided ex parte if he failed to appear. Despite this direction, the petitioner appeared only through Video Conferencing on the next date, in violation of the Court's order.
The Court also examined and dismissed a separate application filed by the petitioner seeking to punish three of the four respondents for allegedly failing to file a counter affidavit, finding this to be factually incorrect since the contesting respondent's counter affidavit had already been filed and served, and that no direction had in fact been issued to the other respondents to file one.
It also found that the petitioner had misused the RTI Act by seeking administrative records unrelated to the merits of his case, wasting court staff's time. Since the information sought had already been provided by the authorities, the Court found no further entitlement to such information and also took note of allegations that the petitioner was harassing the complainant and her daughter.
The Court dismissed Misc. Application with costs of ₹50,000 for being misconceived and contrary to record, directed all 24 RTI applications to be consigned to record with costs of ₹5,000 each (totalling ₹1,20,000), dismissed the writ petition on merits since the requisite information had already been provided, and imposed a further cost of ₹5,00,000 to discourage such conduct, aggregating total costs of ₹6,70,000, to be deposited with the High Court Legal Services Committee within four weeks, failing which the Registrar General was directed to take appropriate steps for recovery.
Cause Title: Vemula Venkata Vinay Babu Alias Vinay Vemula v. State of U.P. and 3 others (Neutral Citation: 2026:AHC:163641)
Appearances:
Petitioner: Prateek Samadhiya for the Petitioner (subsequently appearing in-person).
Respondent: Shyam Singh, Standing Counsel, and Manjari Singh, Advocate.