Supreme Court may go regional with branches in major cities



Kindling hope for lakhs of people in the country's southern, eastern and western regions, the Supreme Court on Friday sought the view of the Centre and the law ministry on establishing a National Court of Appeal (NCA) with regional benches in major cities to hear appeals against orders of high courts.



"An issue of positive nature has been raised. We are issuing notices to the Centre and the Ministry of Law and Justice seeking for an early consideration of the representation," a bench of Chief Justice P. Sathasivam and Justice Ranjan Gogoi noted, seeking their replies within four weeks.



A bench could be set up in the southern, eastern and western regions to decide appeals against orders of the high courts

The petitioner, a Puducherry-based advocate V. Vasantha Kumar, submitted that "distance of the apex court in National Capital from other parts of the country, coupled with high travel expense and cost of litigation were coming in way of citizens from far flung areas to approach the top court of the land, which is otherwise also burdened with large scale pendency of cases."

Kumar moved the apex court after the Centre did not consider his representation for setting up NCA which was suggested by the apex court in a 1986 judgment.

Recommendation

The Law Commission of India in its 125th report had said: "The Supreme Court sits in Delhi alone. Government of India on couple of occasions sought the opinion of the Supreme Court of India for setting up a bench in the South. This proposal did not find favour with the Supreme Court. The result is that those coming from distant places like Tamil Nadu in the South, Gujarat in the West and Assam and other states in the East have to spend huge amount on travel to reach the Supreme Court. And an adjournment becomes prohibitive."

