Telangana to soon have one court per district

Hyderabad: The state government proposes to reorganise subordinate judiciary in the state in view of formation of new districts and set up new courts in the new district headquarters.

The state now has nine district courts, including civil and criminal and metropolitan sessions courts and city civil judge courts in Hyderabad and Secunderabad.

With the formation of 23 new districts, each district requires civil and criminal courts at the district headquarters level to deal with cases of territorial jurisdiction of the district concerned. The state law department has commenced the exercise to constitute new courts after consulting officials of the Telangana High Court registry and is also looking into requirement of additional staff to run the new courts.

Sources in the judiciary said the state government has already communicated to the high court about formation of new districts and its proposal to set up new courts in all the 23 new district headquarters.

Law secretary Mr V. Niranjan Rao said the exercise of constituting new courts is on the cards and they have been examining requirement of courts at the district and mandal level.

The entire exercise was likely to be completed within 2-3 months and the proposals will be placed before the high court for approval. He added that there were sufficient number of courts at the taluq level. The law secretary said that the Supreme Court has been monitoring upgradation of infrastructure in subordinate courts and has directed to ensure that all subordinate courts run from their own accommodation and not rental buildings.

Also, subordinate judges will not be allowed to stay in rental accommodation; they shall be accommodated in residential complexes for judges.

Mr Rao further said that Telangana state was far better when compared to other states as 80 per cent of subordinate courts were functioning from their own government building.