Tripura MLAs to visit Delhi seeking separate High Court

Agartala, Jun 11 (UNI) The Tripura assembly has unanimously passed a resolution to send a three-member legislative delegation led by state Parliamentary Affairs Minister Tapan Chakraborty to New Delhi soon for reiterating the demand for a separate high court in the state.

While accepting the proposal of the leader of the Opposition Ratan Lal Nath, Chief Minister Manik Sarkar recommended that besides Mr Chakraborty, Mr Nath and ruling party MLA Samir Deb Sarkar visit the capital and meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Law Minister H R Bharadwaj to press the demand for a separate high court.

The issue came up for discussion in the form of a call attention motion yesterday and the Chief Minister, who also holds the law portfolio, lent support to the demand.

''The infrastructure in the Agartala bench is no less than that of a high court,'' he said.

''I raised the issue with the then law ministers Ram Jethmalani and Arun Jaitley several times and though Mr Jaitley maintained that regular functioning of permanent benches with posting of adequate number of Judges would neutralise the need for separate high courts in the northeastern states, no improvement was noticed so far,'' he added.

As a result, the people of Tripura have been deprived of justice on time and the number of pending cases was increasing, Mr Sarkar said. He added that the state government had already built separate building for the high court but the Central government had not yet taken any positive step in this regard.

He, however, stated that the Agartala bench of Gauhati High Court has only one permanent Judge and as on January 1, 2008 there were 5656 pending cases with the bench.

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