NOVEMBER 2014
Agra Lawyers on
War-Path
Agra November 28
(IANS)
Agitated lawyers of Agra
today threatened they would gherao prime minister's residence in the capital on
December 19 if their demand for the Allahabad HC bench at Agra, as recommended
by the Jaswant Singh Commission, was not met.
The Agra lawyers are
incensed by the remark of VK Singh, minister of state for external affairs, in
Meerut that the Agra MP Ram Shankar Katheria, minister of state for HRD, had
agreed to the setting up of the bench at Meerut. The lawyers torched an effigy
of Singh and demanded his resignation.
Katheria meanwhile has
clarified that he was for a bench at Agra and for implementation of the Jaswant
Singh Commission report. Katheria in his statement said Singh's statement was
false as he had never talked about it with General Singh, who addressed lawyers
from Meerut at Jantar Mantar on Wednesday and claimed "Katheria had agreed to
leave his demand for the HC Bench in Agra."
A meeting of
all the bars in the districts in Agra and Aligarh divisions has been convened to
intensify the stir for the bench.
Though the movement for the
HC bench at Agra has been going on in fits and starts for over 30 years,
successive governments in the state and at the centre have not committed to
siting the Bench at Agra or at Meerut. The Allahabad High Court lawyers are
opposed to setting up of new benches.
A three-member commission headed by
retired judge of the Supreme Court of India Jaswant Singh, was appointed on 4th
September 1981 to decide the location of the HC bench. In its final report
after years of deliberations and visits the Commission concluded in 1985 :
"Taking into consideration the totality of the conditions and circumstances
peculiar to Agra we find ourselves impelled to agree with the aforesaid views of
the eminent judges and others that Agra would be a suitable place for the
location of the bench."
But the governments over the years have been
dragging their feet and postponing the decision which could prove politically
explosive. "If Meerut got the bench, the whole of Agra region would rise up in
revolt and vice versa if Agra was chosen for siting the Bench, there would be
trouble in the Meerut area. Perhaps the solution lies in setting up two benches
or a circuit bench that keeps rotating between the two cities," says a lawyer
Kuldip Narain Lal.
Agra was the seat of the High Court in the
United Provinces before independence. But later it was shifted to Allahabad
which today has become the largest high court in the country with maximum number
of pending cases around 20 percent of the total cases pending all over India.
The reason given for the high number of
pendency is the shortage of judges. Against 170 odd sanctioned, more than 50 are
lying vacant, according to senior lawyer Rajveer Singh.
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