Tharoor makes strong plea for HC bench in TVM, Iyer disagrees

Says majority of the states have multiple benches

Union minister Shashi Tharoor today once again made a strong plea for a Kerala High Court bench at Thiruvananthapuram even as eminent jurist and former Supreme Court Judge V R Krishna Iyer said he was against "slicing" of the High Court.

Majority of the states have multiple benches, Tharoor, who represents Thiruvanthapuram in Parliament, said at a conference here on the 'Future of Law, Justice and Governance in India', organised as part of the 99th birthday celebrations of Justice Krishna Iyer.

Criticising the decision of the Bar Association to boycott the conference and issuing directive to lawyers to stay away from it, Tharoor said "this was a new low in the history of public life".

Those behind such things should be ashamed to call themselves lawyers and were 'disgrace' to the profession, he said.

The Minister said he had looked forward to engaging with some leading members of the bar association on the question of High Court bench in the Kerala capital.

He said the volume of cases in Kerala had grown so much that today there were at least 20,000 cases pending cases, 50 per cent of which involve state government as litigant. The state government was spending over Rs 3 crore by way of TA/DA for officials to testify in the High Court, he said.

This was not only expenditure for government but officials had to be away from their work for at least two days to appear for a few minutes before the High Court here.