The Madras High Court is reeling under space crunch with every conceivable place in the 125-year-old heritage building as well as its annexe being turned into a court hall due to substantial increase in the strength of judges. The court is now in the process of creating four more court halls, in addition to 44 in existence now, to accommodate nine more judges expected to assume office in the coming year.
According to court officials, the heritage building had been utilised to its maximum by creating as many as 33 court halls. Therefore, the rest of the 11 court halls were established on the first and second floors of the annexe building which houses most of the offices of the Registry. Now, the court has begun the process of creating four more court halls on the same building after shifting one of the offices. Though, at present, the High Court has a working strength of 60 judges, as against its sanctioned strength of 75 judges, five of them Justices A. Selvam, P. Kalaiyarasan, N. Authinathan, A.M. Basheer Ahamed and S. Baskaran were slated to retire from service in the coming year. While Mr. Justice Authinathan would be the first to retire on January 18, Mr. Justice Baskaran would complete his tenure on November 15.
In the meantime, since the Supreme Court collegium had cleared the names of nine advocates to be elevated as judges of the High Court, the court has begun making preparations for creating court halls as well as chambers required for the new judges. “The newly created court halls are cramped and lack the majesty of the old court halls in the heritage building because we do not have space,” said an official attached to the Registry. As of now, about seven Division Benches (comprising two judges) function full time in the High Court to deal with cases such as public interest litigation petitions, writ appeals, original side appeals, habeas corpus petitions and criminal appeals in cases where the punishment imposed by trial courts was more than 10 years. The number of these Division Benches could be increased further in the coming year, the officer pointed out.
“Apart from court halls, finding space for judges’ chambers is equally difficult. Already, many judges have been provided chambers in the annexe building as all of them could not be accommodated in the heritage building. This, in effect, means the judges have to walk quite a distance from their chambers to the halls and back and unlike its Madurai Bench, the HC buildings here do not have a separate walkway for them,” he added.
