Permanent benches to make life of litigants in N Karnataka easier

Dream of benches in Dharwad, Gulbarga realised

Finally the long standing demand of the people in North and Hyderabad-Karnataka region has been fulfilled with the Union Cabinet on Tuesday deciding to convert the Karnataka High Court circuit benches in Dharwad and Gulbarga into permanent benches.

It has been almost five years since the circuit bench of Karnataka High Court was established in Dharwad and Gulbarga (July 7, 2008) and the legal fraternity in North Karnataka had been demanding that the circuit bench in Dharwad be converted into permanent benches.

There was jubilation in Dharwad on Wednesday as members of bar association and other social organisations who had been fighting for the cause cheered the Union Cabinet decision.

President of Dharwad Bar Association Venkareddy Kamareddy, president of high court advocates' association B D Hiremath, former MLA Chandrakant Bellad and others hailed the decision of the Cabinet and said it would help in the speedy disposal of cases. Mallappa Patil of Aminabhavi who has been fighting cases in the high court for the last five years welcomed the decision and said it would save a lot of time, energy and money for the litigants.

The demand for a permanent bench was only because of the number of cases in the jurisdiction of the Dharwad circuit bench which stood at 21,000 when the circuit house started functioning and has tripled to nearly 70,000 in the last five years.

However, the courts hearing public interest litigations (PILs), appellate tribunals and green benches continued to be in Bangalore High Court. Now with the circuit benches becoming permanent benches these cases can also be heard at Dharwad and Gulbarga.

In fact the decades-long struggle for a high court bench in North Karnataka had been for a permanent bench.

The demand for the establishment of the bench intensified after Justice Jaswant Singh Commission (1983) spoke in favour of the same. With strong opposition from lawyers in Bangalore, the fulfillment of the demand was not easy and the people of north Karnataka had to resort to agitations, which at times turned violent.

What had been a lawyers' movement soon became people's movement and the government and high court had to accede to the demand for the HC bench outside Bangalore. However, the location of the bench became a contentious issue with several towns in North Karnataka staking a claim. Finally, the government decided to set up two circuit benches at Dharwad and Gulbarga.

The cases arising from the districts of Bagalkot, Bellary, Belgaum, Dharwad, Gadag, Haveri, Koppal and Uttara Kannada are being heard and decided at Dharwad while those from Bijapur, Bidar, Gulbarga and Raichur are heard and decided at Gulbarga.

There are permanent benches of high court outside the principal seat in Rajasthan (Jaipur and Jodhpur), Uttara Pradesh (Allahabad, Lucknow), Madhya Pradesh (Bhopal and Indore), Kerala (Tiruvanathapuram and Kochi) and Tamil Nadu (Chennai and Madurai).