Lawyers forum reiterates demand for circuit bench at Kolhapur

Kolhapur: Lawyers' representatives from six districts held a meeting with elected members of the assemblies on Sunday and demanded a circuit bench of the High Court at Kolhapur.
They said the chief minister should write a letter to the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court advocating a circuit bench of the HC in Kolhapur and assure the CJ that the govt will provide necessary infrastructure to run the bench.
The meeting was chaired by Congress MP Shahu Chhatrapati. He said he wrote a letter to CM Shinde three months ago regarding the demands of the lawyers' fraternity; however, the letter yielded no response.
The lawyers claimed that the demand was justified given the distance the litigants have to travel and the trauma they face to attend hearings in Mumbai. Out of the total pending cases in the HC, nearly 35% are from these six districts, said Sarjerao Khot, president of Kolhapur District Bar Association and chief convenor of the circuit bench demand forum.
For decades, lawyers from Kolhapur, Sangli, Satara, Solapur, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg have been demanding the bench of HC at Kolhapur. To get a full-fledged bench, the circuit bench needed to be set up first. According to the lawyers associated with the movement, it is a prerogative of the Chief Justice of HC.
"We met CM Shinde a couple of times. We need him to talk to the Chief Justice and show that the govt is willing to provide the necessary infrastructure for the circuit bench. We were assured that he would do the needful, but it has not yet happened. Again, we have passed the resolution in the meeting with the elected representatives that the CM should take steps before the code of conduct for the assembly election is imposed," said Khot.
The lawyers mentioned that when Devendra Fadnavis was the CM, budgetary allocation to set up the necessary infrastructure was made. When Uddhav Thackeray was CM, a letter was written to the then CJ Dipankar Dutta, who held a meeting with the lawyers' representatives and sought a consultation meeting with the CM.