The Supreme Court on Wednesday pulled up West Bengal, Karnataka and Kerala for poor infrastructure for trial courts, while terming the performance of Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand as “satisfactory”. In the process of assessing judicial officers’ vacancies in states and the status of infrastructure, a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices S K Kaul and K M Joseph criticised the West Bengal government and Calcutta HC for “poor vision” about providing infrastructure to judicial officers.
“Affidavit filed by West Bengal chief secretary (present in court) is skilfully drafted. When the need is for construction of 422 court halls and 630 residences for judicial officers, the state is moving at snail’s pace for 75 court halls and 39 residences. The state promises to provide all funds required but in tranches, and it appears that projects for adequate judicial infrastructure would be completed only in 2027,” the bench said.
Turning its attention to Calcutta HC, the SC said, “These projects will be complete only if the HC, which appears to be in a slumber, provides infrastructure requirement details to the government in time.” Karnataka was next and it surprised the bench by informing that of the 30 vacancies it had advertised for district judge posts, it found only four suitable for appointment.
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