Observing that “there is a need to think about the future requirement for 100 years”, the Bombay High Court on Tuesday said said, “If the persons who are now in the helm of affairs ignore the same, the future generation will blame them.” The court directed the state government to take a decision in six months in regard to offering a large and convenient plot of land for the construction of a new high court complex.
A division bench of Justice AS Oka and Justice MS Sonak also restrained the state government from selling or using the land parcel identified at Bandra east for court complex ad-measuring (6.02 hectare), and land offered in Andheri (11.68 hectares), for the next nine months.
The bench emphasised on the new court complex which would meet all requirement by referring to the speech delivered by Independent India’s first Indian Chief Justice of Bombay High Court, MC Chagla, marking the Bombay HC’s centenary year. Chagla had said, “Men come and go, but institutions must go on and in celebrating this centenary of the high court, we can only hope and pray that at the end of the next hundred years, the historian will be truthfully able to say that irrespective of human weaknesses, the brilliant record of the institution as such was maintained.”