Sunday, November 30, 2014

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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