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.
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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. 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. 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.
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Premises
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. 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. In August 1984, the judges M. N. Venkatachaliah and Vittal Rao pronounced a judgement that stayed the demolition.
Judges
The High Court has a sanctioned judge strength of 62. 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 and others including Kalmanje Jagannatha Shetty, N. Venkatachala, R. V. Raveendran, Shivaraj Patil, Venkate Gopala Gowda, Mohan Shantanagoudar and S. Abdul Nazeer being appointed as judges in the Supreme Court of India.
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 Chief Justice.
List of former Chief Justices
Additional Benches
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. 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.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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