The state Cabinet on Wednesday approved the proposal to set up one more high court bench at Kolhapur. Chief minister Prithviraj Chavan will write a letter to Chief Justice of Bombay high court in this regard. The Cabinet also witnessed differences over the location where the proposed bench would be set up.
While state home minister R.R. Patil wanted it to be located in Kolhapur, parliamentary affairs minister Harshwardhan Patil thought Pune was the best location.
According to a source from the Cabinet, “Both Mr R.R Patil and Mr Harshwardhan Patil the leaders sparred over the location for the HC bench, after which chief minister Prithviraj Chavan intervened and assured that he would send a reminder letter to Chief Justice of the Bombay high court about setting up an additional bench in the Western Maharashtra region.”
The Bombay HC has benches in Goa, Aurangabad and Nagpur. A demand to set up another bench in Western Maharashtra came forward because of the high pendancy of the cases in the HC, as well as its geographical distance from the region.
Hundreds of lawyers from six districts of western Maharashtra are protesting since the past six days, demanding a separate bench of high court at Kolhapur. Mr R.R. Patil raised the issue in the state Cabinet meeting.
According to the source, Mr R.R. Patil said that since 60,000 cases from Pune, Kolhapur, Sangli, Satara, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts are pending at the Bombay high court, Kolhapur would be centrally located for all these districts.
However, Mr Harshwardhan Patil, who is also the guardian minister of Kolhapur, was of the opinion that people from Akola and Amravati also want a separate bench and therefore, Pune would be more convenient for litigants.