Govt considers vesting Prez with powers to rename high courts

Earlier, Law Ministry had planned to bring a bill to rename high courts on case-by-case basis

Amid growing demands for changing nomenclatures of High Courts, the government is contemplating a law to vest the President with powers to rename the courts after consulting the state authorities and concerned chief justices.

Earlier, the Law Ministry had planned to bring a bill to rename high courts on case-by-case basis. The plan then was to first change the names of the iconic Bombay and Madras High Courts to Mumbai and Chennai High Court respectively through an Act of Parliament.

But, with various states and other stakeholders, coming out with fresh demands, the Department of Justice in now working on a proposal to vest powers with the President to change the nomenclature of a high court after consulting the state authorities -- Governor and the Chief Minister -- as also the Chief Justice of the concerned high court.

The logic behind the fresh proposal is that the government will not have to bring a new bill every time a proposal is approved to rename a high court, sources in the Law Ministry said. The legalities involved in the new proposal are being looked at before the final call is taken to approach the Union Cabinet with the proposal.

As of now, there is no mechanism available with the government to rename a high court.

There have been demands for the high courts to correspond to the present names of the cities.

Besides, the Bombay High Court and the Madras High court, there has also been demand to rename the Calcutta High Court as Kolkata High Court.

Recently, BJD MPs in the Lok Sabha had demanded that the Orissa High Court be renamed as Odisha High Court. Party MP B Mahtab had written in this regard to Law Minister D V Sadananda Gowda, who had in turn asked him to get the state government send a proposal along with the consent of the Chief Justice of the high court.

There have been persistent demands to rename the Bombay and Madras high courts as Mumbai High Court and Chennai High Court ever since the metros were rechristened in the 1990s.

The 'Indian High Court Act' of 1861 vested in the Queen of England to issue letters patent to establish high courts of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay.

The Bombay High Court was inaugurated on August 14, 1862. The high court today has three benches at Nagpur, Aurangabad and Goa. The Bombay HC is one of the very few institutions in Maharashtra that continue to carry the old name of the city.

The state government renamed Bombay as Mumbai in 1995 and all institutions under it altered names accordingly.

The Madras High Court, which came into being around the same time, has one bench in Madurai.

Besides, demands being made by the Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu governments, various organisations too have been pressing for renaming the two high courts.

The Calcutta High Court has the distinction of being the first high court and one of the three chartered high courts to be set up in India, along with the high courts of Bombay and Madras. It was formally opened on July 1, 1862.