High Court benches needed very much in AP, Telangana

The volume of work in High Courts has increased by leaps and bounds and though all the vacancies of High Court Judges are filled up, yet the appeals would be pending in the High Court for a long time. There are still appeals against the sentence of life imprisonment and the government proposes to dispose of those cases by appointing additional Judges.

There has been a steady increase of population and thereby the volume of litigation also has increased. The plethora of enactments by the State Legislature and the Parliament have added to the volume of work. There is awareness and the parties go in for a writ either in the High Court or in the Supreme Court for speedy disposal of regular appeals, revisions etc., and hence there is large-scale accumulation of cases.

In North India, in almost all States, there are more than one Bench of the High Courts other than at the State capital. Based on the concept that “delayed justice is denied justice,” the life of a culprit will automatically transform into a different life if the justice is not meted out in the appropriate time. There was a pendency of 2,319 cases in 1989 in the Supreme Court and now it has exceeded 1,99,138 cases altogether.

By 1991, there were 76,314 cases pending disposal in Andhra Pradesh High Court. Litigation is on the increase and it may result in a force and the whole judicial system will be vitiated. To impart justice to the needy, it is quite essential to have the Supreme Court Benches here and there for the early disposal of pending cases.

There are examples that the High Court is located in Allahabad rather than in Lucknow in the unwieldy state of Uttar Pradesh and the High Court of Kerala is located at Ernakulam rather than Thiruvananthapuram. There is a High Court Bench in Lucknow and they want to have another in Kanpur also. There are separate High Court Benches in Nagpur, Aurangabad in Maharashtra and in Jabalpur and Indore in Madhya Pradesh.

Our advocates in the coastal area have been pleading for the establishment of High Court Bench in between Vijayawada and Guntur and now the students are in the fray demanding for the early establishment of such a High Court Bench. When the state capital was at Kurnool before the formation of Visalandhara, the High Court was in Guntur and only in 1956 after the formation of Andhra Pradesh, was the High Court shifted to Hyderabad.

The State of Andhra Pradesh is quite large and unwieldy and right from Icchapuram in Srikakulam District to Tada in Nellore district. It would be easy for the litigant public to come over to Guntur parts to have justice and hence they have been agitating for the creation of a Bench in between Vijayawada and Guntur.

According to the dictum of decentralisation, it is absolutely necessary to have High Court benches each in Rayalaseema, Coastal and Telangana. Though it may cost some money for the Exchequer, it is worthwhile to have separate Benches. There are a number of cases pending in HC from Rayalaseema and therefore setting up of a Bench is imperative. Rayalaseema is a backward area.

Litigant public generally are poor. If the HC Bench is established in Rayalaseema, it is very convenient to the litigant public and it amounts to taking justice to the doorsteps. (Writer is former Speaker, AP Legislative Assembly)

By Dr Agarala Eswara Reddi