Karnataka High Court

Karnataka High Court
High Court Building
Established	1884
Country	India
Location	Bangalore, Karnataka (Principle Seat) Dharwad & Gulbarga (circuit benches)
Composition method	Presidential with confirmation of Chief Justice of India and Governor of respective state.
Authorized by	Constitution of India
Decisions are appealed to	Supreme Court of India
Judge term length	Till 62 years of age
Number of positions	40
Website	karnatakajudiciary.kar.nic.in
Chief Justice
Currently	Subhro Kamal Mukherjee
Since	June 2015

The Karnataka High Court is the High Court of the Indian state of Karnataka. It is located in Bangalore, the capital city of Karnataka. The High Court functions out of a red brick building known as Attara Kacheri. It is in front of Vidhana Soudha, which is the seat of the legislature of Karnataka.The Karnataka High Court is currently functional in Bangalore, Hubli-Dharwad and Gulbarga.

History

The history of the Karnataka High Court can be traced back to the year 1884 when the Chief Court of Mysore was created with three judges and was designated as the highest court of appeal, reference and revision in the State of Mysore, the earlier name of Karnataka.^[1] The court had District Courts, Sub-ordinate Judges' Courts and Munsiff Courts to assist it on civil cases and a Court of Sessions, District Magistrate and First, Second and Third Class Magistrates to assist it on criminal cases.^[2] In 1881, the office of the Chief Judge was created and the designated person had the utmost authority in the court. In 1930, it was renamed as the High Court of Mysore and the Chief Judge was given the new name of Chief Justice. In 1973, it got its present name of Karnataka High Court.

Premises

Rear Side

The High Court is located in a building called as Attara Kacheri (meaning Eighteen offices). It is a two-storied building of stone and brick, painted red, in the Graeco-Roman style of architecture – a structure of vast expanse with Ionic porticoes at the center and at the two ends of the elevation. The construction of the building was supervised by Rao Bahadur Arcot Narayanaswami Mudaliar and completed in the year 1868. It was earlier named as Old Public Offices and got its name of Attara Kacheri when the eighteen departments in the general and revenue secretariat of the Mysore Government were shifted here from their crowded premises in Tipu Sultan's summer palace.Tipu's Palace was only a temporary house for the offices. When Mr. Bowring took over as Commissioner after Cubbon, he found the building unsuitable, both because of its state of maintenance as well as its limited accommodation which no longer sufficed for the much increased work of administering the State. It was he who conceived and prepared the plans for a full-fledged secretariat building in the city area. The construction was taken up in 1864 and completed at a cost of Rs. 4.5 lakhs in 1868.
There was a proposal to demolish this building in the year 1982.^[3] However, a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed in order to save this old building from getting demolished. This was the first PIL to be filed in the Karnataka High court and the case was heard in the very building that was supposed to be demolished.^[4] In August 1984, the judges M. N. Venkatachaliah and Vittal Rao pronounced a judgement that stayed the demolition.

Judges

Attara Katcheri, Bangalore (Early 1900s), Tucks Post Card

The High Court has a sanctioned judge strength of 62.^[5] Many judges have presided in the High Court with four of them including E. S. Venkataramiah, M. N. Venkatachaliah, S. Rajendra Babu and H.L. Dattu, going on to become the Chief Justice of India^[6] and at least 13 of them including N. Venkatachala, R. V. Raveendran, Shivaraj Patil and Venkate Gopala Gowda being appointed as judges in the Supreme Court of India.^[7]

The Chief Justices

Raja Dharma Praveena Diwan Bahadur P Mahadevayya, M Sadasivayya, Nittoor Srinivasa Rau, Sam Piroj Bharucha and G. T. Nanavati were some of the famous Chief Justices who presided over this court. Presently, Justice Subhro Kamal Mukherjee is the Acting Chief Justice.

List of former Chief Justices

#	Chief Justice	Term
1	R.Venkataramaiah	1 November 1956 – 16 July 1957
2	S. R. Das Gupta	25 July 1957 – 13 August 1961
3	Nittoor Srinivasa Rau	29 March 1962 – 7 August 1963
Acting	H. Hombe Gowda	20 January 1964 – 1 August 1969
Acting	A. R. Somanath Iyer	1 August 1969 – 30 August 1969
Acting	M. Sadasivayya	31 August 1969 – 23 October 1969
Acting	A. R. Somanath Iyer	24 October 1969 – 22 November 1969
4	A. R. Somanath Iyer	23 November 1969 – 29 December 1969
5	M. Sadasivayya	30 December 1969 – 16 September 1970
6	A. Narayana Pai	17 September 1970 – 6 June 1973
7	G. K. Govinda Bhat	7 June 1973 – 14 December 1977
8	D. M. Chandrashekar	22 March 1978 – 25 September 1982
Acting	K. Bhimaiah	26 September 1982 – 27 October 1982
9	K. Bhimaiah	28 October 1982 – 10 April 1983
10	V. S. Malimath	6 February 1984 – 24 October 1985
Acting	Kalmanje Jagannatha Shetty	24 October 1985 – 27 August 1986
11	Prem Chand Jain	28 August 1986 – 16 September 1989
12	S. Mohan	26 October 1989 – 7 October 1991
13	S. P. Bharucha	1 January 1991 – 30 June 1992
14	S. B. Majumdar	2 July 1993 – 13 September 1994
15	G. T. Nanavati	28 September 1994 – 4 March 1995
16	M. L. Pendse	28 July 1995 – 25 March 1996
17	S. A. Hakeem	3 May 1996 – 9 May 1996
18	R. P. Sethi	29 June 1996 – 6 January 1999
Acting	Y. Bhaskar Rao	17 January 1999 – 8 March 1999
19	Y. Bhaskar Rao	9 March 1999 – 26 June 2000
20	P. V. Reddi	21 October 2000 – 16 August 2001
21	Nagendra Kumar Jain	31 August 2001 – 20 October 2004
22	N. K. Sodhi	19 November 2004 – 29 November 2005
23	Cyriac Joseph	7 January 2006 – 6 July 2008
24	P. D. Dinakaran	8 August 2008 – 7 August 2010
25	J S Khehar	8 August 2010 – 12 September 2011
26	Vikramajit Sen	24 December 2011 - 23 December 2012
Acting	K Shridhar Rao
27	Dhirendra Hiralal Waghela	March 2013 - 31 May 2015
Subhro Kamal Mukherjee	1 June 2015 - till date

Additional Benches

Karnataka High court bench in Gulbarga.

The Karnataka High Court is currently functional in Bangalore, Dharwad and Gulbarga. There was a long-standing demand for an additional bench in the northern region of Karnataka. The main reason being the location of Bangalore in south-east corner of the state causes great hardship for people who have to visit the High Court from the distant northern regions of the state. This issue led to lot of agitations including boycott of court proceedings by lawyers in the northern region of Karnataka. The demand was finally met in the year 2006 when it was decided that circuit benches of the High Court would be set up in Dharwad and Gulbarga.^[8] Accordingly, circuit benches were set up in Dharwad and Gulbarga. They were inaugurated on 4 July 2008 and 5 July 2008 respectively. There was vocal demand to make both Dharwad and Gulbarga benches as permanent benches. Consequently, Dharwad circuit bench became a permanent bench from 25 August 2013 and Gulbarga circuit bench became a permanent bench from 31 August 2013.

Controversy

In late 2002, 14 newspapers and periodicals reported that some judges from the High Court of Karnataka were allegedly involved in a sex scandal in Mysore. A high-level judicial inquiry committee was established by the Chief Justice. Later, the committee acquitted the judges as they could not find any substantive evidence.^[9][10][11]

See also

• High Courts of India

References

1. B. S. Ramesh (13 January 2006). "Luminaries who presided over the High Court". Online Edition of The Hindu, dated 2006-01-13. Chennai, India. Retrieved 11 September 2007.
2. "History". Online webpage of The High Court of Karnataka. Retrieved 11 September 2007.
3. "When the axe was spared". Online Edition of The Hindu, dated 2007-04-18. Chennai, India. 18 April 2007. Retrieved 11 September 2007.
4. "The battle for Attara Kacheri". Online Edition of The Hindu, dated 2006-04-18. Chennai, India. 18 April 2006. Retrieved 11 September 2007.
5. N C Gundu Rao. "Systemic woes under penumbra". Online Edition of The Deccan Herald, dated 2004-10-12. Retrieved 11 September 2007.
6. "List of Judges of Karnataka who were appointed as Chief Justice of India". Online webpage of The High Court of Karnataka. Retrieved 11 September 2007.
7. "List of Judges of Karnataka who were appointed as judges in the Supreme Court of India". Online webpage of The High Court of Karnataka. Retrieved 11 September 2007.
8. "Contracts signed for circuit Bench buildings". Online Edition of The Hindu, dated 2006-08-05. Chennai, India. 5 August 2006. Retrieved 11 September 2007.
9. "Mysore sex scandal: Media faces contempt case". Times of India. India. 7 February 2003. Retrieved 7 February 2003.
10. "Contempt proceedings against scribes stayed". TribuneIndia. Retrieved 5 May 2003.
11. "Karnataka HC judges cleared in sex scandal". Rediff. Retrieved 2 February 2003.

Further reading

• Jurisdiction and Seats of Indian High Courts
• Judge strength in High Courts increased
• Dharwad HC circuit bench gets permanent tag - Business Standard News

External links

• Official Karnataka High Court website

Coordinates: 12°58′41″N 77°35′33″E / 12.97792°N 77.59257°E

• Attara Kacheri