Haryana urges for a separate High Court at Chandigarh

New Delhi, Mar 11 (UNI) Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda today urged the Central Government to establish a separate High Court for Haryana at Chandigarh and filling the vacancies of judges in High Courts and Subordinate Courts on priority basis.

Speaking at the Chief Ministers and Chief Justices of High Courts Conference here, Mr Hooda fully supported the proposal of establishing Fast Track Courts at the Magisterial Level to check the pendency of cases and hoped that the scheme would be funded by the Union Government.

He said that the State Government had prepared a 10-year perspective plan amounting to Rs 162.24 crore for strengthening the judicial infrastructure, keeping in view future needs. There was a need to simplify laws and procedures to make the process inexpensive, besides tackling the issues of structural, technological and legislative initiatives.

The Chief Minister said that the State Governmen had been encouraging the alternative dispues redressal measures reduced the arrears of court cases. Lok Adalats were one of such options in this regard.

He informed that since 2001, as many as 2,516 Lok Adalas had been held and over 9,47,464 cases were taken up out of which 5,88,784 had been decided.

In order to hasten the process of computerisation, the High Court had constituted a society named Society for Information Technology Initiative Funds for e-courts under the chairmanship of the Chief Justice, Mr Hooda said and added that the government had released Rs 4.25 crore for the purpose to the society.

The Chief Minister stated that modern judicial complexes had been constructed at 17 districts headquarters and the proposals were under consideration for the remaining three districts headquarters.

The State Government had been constructing modern judicial complexes at the sub-divisional level.

He informed that the State Government had spent more than Rs 50 crore on the development of infrastructure for the judiciary during the last decade.

Mr Hooda also informed that the Joint Judicial Academy was being set up at Chandigarh for imparting training to the Judicial Officers from Haryana and Punjab. The expenses amounting to Rs 37 crores, would be shared by both states.

The Chief Minister pointed out that the government had implemented almost all of the recommendations of the first National Judicial Pay Commission and said that the judiciary must get a fair deal in the scheme of National Wage Policy and socio-economic environment of the country for attracting the best talent.

UNI BBS VD HT1820