Decision to set up panel for HC bench in capital hailed

: Minister of State for HRD Shashi Tharoor today hailed the Kerala High Court's decision to constitute a panel comprising five seniormost judges to conduct a feasibility study to set up a Bench of the Court in this city.

The committee is to be headed by Justice K M Joseph. Other judges on the panel are Thottathil B Radhakrishnan, K T Sankaran, S Siri Jagan and T R Ramachandran Nair.

The Registrar-General of the High Court informed Tharoor of the decision of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur to issue the order constituting the committee.

Terming it as a significant development, Tharoor, who represents Thiruvananthapuram in the Lok Sabha, said his efforts over the past four years to solve the decades-old issue was finally bearing fruit. It was unusual for a state capital not to have a High Court Bench, he said in a statement here.
 

Tharoor said that given the large number of cases in which the state was a litigant, the government had to spend about Rs crore a year in TA and DA to send officials to depose in Kochi, leaving their work unattended in Thiruvananthapuram.

"It promotes both waste and inefficiency. A High Court bench would also serve the people of the southern districts of Kerala as well," he said.