Chief Justice of India Justice Surya Kant on Sunday said lawyers from Leh and Kargil would soon be able to virtually access the Supreme Court from the Ladakh Bench of the High Court.
Describing the inauguration as a historic step, the CJI referred to the establishment of a Special Court in Leh in 1870, observing that while the institution had passed into history, the geographical challenges that restricted access to justice persisted for generations. The CJI said the insertion of the name ‘Ladakh’ in a high court after it became a Union Territory in 2019 was an important step, but the gesture remained largely symbolic.
All matters originating from Ladakh would be listed on a single day and heard through video-conferencing, sparing lawyers and litigants the time, cost and hardship of travelling to Delhi, Justice Kant said as he inaugurated the Ladakh Bench of the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh here. “For close to a century, the high court that served Ladakh sat beyond the Great Himalayas, reachable in winter only by air,” he said. “A name on a court’s letterhead is not the same as a court at one’s doorstep,” he said. He also said that once video-conferencing facilities have been set up at the bench, the Supreme Court would list all matters originating from Ladakh on a single day and hear them on a day-to-day basis virtually.
