Segregating different wings of courts could be a solution to the ever increasing requirements of space to house additional court rooms as shifting courts to new “spacious” buildings as on date, is showing its limitations of the plans and lay outs of the new buildings built to house our judicial offices. Prudent planningenvisages that at least for two to three decades to come, sufficient and foolproof measures were taken as shifting frequently from one place to the other caused problems and had its own limitations. Just take the case of parking of vehicles alone in court premises , how much space do vehicles occupy perhaps was never envisaged by the planners. The situation, however, has reached to such a pass that the judiciary in Jammu and Kashmir is facing a grave situation in terms of space and ambiance constraints. Available infrastructure is more or less in an inertial mode though requiring periodic review to devise means to decongest and make available additional functional capacity.
Is there a well established system to regularly monitor whether the available infrastructure was absorbing and coping up with the ever mounting pressures ? When has the last overall situation been analysed and evaluated to get a feel as to whether the existing available structure was sufficient and capable to run court rooms and whether this part of the country matched with other states in respect of additions , alterations and renovations along with shifting some of the wings otherwise facing acute space constraints to some other spacious centres? Whether there was complete understanding of all the “stake holders” associated with the courts the need to shifting some of the wings or the entire judicial offices to newer spacious premises. Whether benchmark laid down by the Supreme Court of India about bare minimum requirements in this respect are being followed in respect of Jammu and Kashmir High Court complex in both the capital cities of the UT ?In the absence of such a systematic periodic exercise, there was every likelihood of things plunging into a mess.
Not only both the wings of the High Court are suffering from such constraints to the extent of there being not reasonably sufficient court rooms even for holding courts, on the other hand, the situation in respect of the district courts is more precarious as they are reeling under non availability of even basic facilities. The reports submitted in this regard to the Chief Justice of the common High Court for Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and Union Territory of Ladakh has made it clear that as against other parts of the country, Jammu and Kashmir has not kept pace with those places in boosting the infrastructure required for smooth conducting of the judicial work – be it physical structure or the technology etc.
Furthermore, it speaks very poor of planning and management that even with an additional newly appointed judge , there is virtual scramble in office administration to provide a suitable court room. That the same appearing unlikely looking to the structure of the ‘new building ‘ in Jammu is astonishing . So is the case with the Srinagar wing of the High Court. In order to ensure access to hassles free justice by the people , it becomes one of the priorities for the UT Government to look into the matter and resolve it not on ad-hoc basis or on patch repairs work basis but for taking care of next ten to twenty years’ requirements.
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel