School Education Minister Thangam Thennarasu on Sunday urged the Prime Minister, Union Law Minister and Supreme Court Chief Justice to locate a Bench of Supreme Court in Tamil Nadu and introduce Tamil as the language of the Madras High Court.
Addressing the joint conference of Chief Ministers’ of the State and the Chief Justices’ of High Courts in New Delhi, he said that the first request was pending for the last 29 years and the second proposal for over 18 months.
“We will be grateful for expeditious approval of the resolution passed in our State Legislative Assembly and recommended by His Excellency in this regard. The State’s request for a Bench of the Supreme Court to be located in Tamil Nadu is also pending for the last 29 years. This may be considered favourably and orders issued expeditiously,” he said.
Mentioning that they also sought the Centre’s support for allocation of substantial sums of money for enhancing infrastructural facilities for the Judiciary in the State, he said “the perspective plan, in this regard sent in 2006, is yet to receive allocation of the Government of India.”
The Minister urged the Chief Justice of India to prevail upon the advocates not to resort to boycott of Courts at least in the future and mentioned that the functioning of judiciary in the State was affected continuously. In some instances, it was up to 94 days in some of the subordinate courts, he mentioned.
According to the Minister, the number of cases pending in the subordinate courts in the State as of December 2008 was 5.76 lakh (civil) and about 4.40 lakh (criminal), marking an increase of 15.43 per cent over the civil cases and 2.68 per cent over the criminal cases respectively compared to the corresponding period last year.
“Also, over 4.11 lakh civil cases and 40,000 criminal cases are pending in the High Court of Madras. I do hope that urgent steps would be taken to reduce the pendency of the cases at all level of Courts in the State,” he added.
