We Lost the War. Let's Accept Defeat.

A Lost Cause

Before we leave, the final letter to  posterity.

 

They came and destroyed our home. A shameful expenditure of public money ! That's the only thought which rules the mind if we weigh the balance of convenience between supporters of shifting of High Court from Nainital and its opponents.  Its very obvious that every supporter shall want the High Court to be lodged in his courtyard and opponents will not like it due to inconvenience of uprooting the existing set up. However the question is much broader than the convenience of either lawyers or judges.

 

By and large the whole exercise has been done in a very secretive manner! Most of the information to the stake holders, is revealed only through morning newspapers. Government has disclosed, expansion of court & convenience of litigants as prime reasons! It is weird and unfathomable by any reasonable standard that the High Court of Uttarakhand, whose Chief Justice sits in a bigger court room than the Chief Justice of India, is even citing space as any problem! Space, expensiveness and travel inconvenience are the biggest problems today before a litigant in Supreme Court of India, but it is not shifting!

 

High Court of Uttarakhand has a unique character which perhaps no other court in this country enjoys. A perennial vacancy of judges in this court has resulted in about half of its courtrooms in a permanent locked state. A State, which has failed to supply even enough judges to fill up the already sanctioned strength, is citing expansions of court even a reason of shifting. How absurd it sounds! 

 

He was waiting...

The very object of the creation of the state of Uttarakhand was development of Hill regions. High court is an Institution of State. Establishment of such high constitutional court in Hill area was a major development which happened with the creation of new State. Inconvenience of litigants , lawyers and judges in Nainital doesn't even stand a chance if its compared with the fellow citizens of remote areas of Uttarakhand, living in hills and waiting for the institutions of the State to reach there someday. 

 

                                                                                         Anurag Upadhyay

A government, which has failed to provide even basic roads and health care to its villages has spare money for shifting like exercise, is another conundrum.  

 

Luxurious exercises of State like court shifting definitely gives the only impression that State has already achieved all its welfare goals and now indulging in extravagant activities. Its surprising too that Court which has advised caution to government on being extra careful while spending public money in each case, didn't ask the same question this time! Whose money is it and  from where it will come?

 

Long standing institutions built their own character and memory. Shifting shall delete  all institutional character and memory in one stroke. A high institution of State in the hills has an immense symbolic value too for the people of hills. Not only this shifting will kill the character which has been built in last twenty years but also shall lead to a huge population migration from the hill area.

 

                                          They left...

It looks like this State has fallen in the trap of Aliens, who have fed the thought that hills are only for their tourism activities. 

 

Alas! they couldn't understand that the Courts are not built and expended by the size of its courtrooms rather Courts are strengthened by the depth and entrenched idea of Justice in its Judgments. 

 

Kartikey