The Madras High Court earlier this week directed the Commissioner of Land Administration to ascertain the value of 0.57 acres of land which the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) had agreed to transfer to the court on payment of necessary consideration.
A full Bench of Chief Justice Vijaya Kamlesh Tahilramani, Justices M. Duraiswamy and Krishnan Ramasamy issued the direction on a couple of public interest litigation petitions that were pending in the court for long with regard to allotment of funds for the judiciary. When the two cases, one filed by advocate G. Rajendran in 2002 and another taken up suo motu in 2011, were listed for hearing before the full Bench, Advocate General (A-G) Vijay Narayan told the court that most of the financial issues had been solved over the years.
He also brought to the notice of the court that the two PIL petitions were listed for hearing last on January 10, 2017, during the tenure of the then Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul (now a Supreme Court judge) and since then much water had flown on grant of funds.
In so far as acquisition of land belonging to MTC near the Tamil Nadu State Legal Services Authority building was concerned, he pointed out that a bus terminus had been functioning on 1.83 acres of which 1.25 acres was already acquired by the High Court in 2003.
That acquisition had taken place for the purpose of constructing a building for the exclusive use of law officers from Puducherry. However, since the Puducherry government had not allotted funds for the construction, the land remained unused and vacant till date.
In the meantime, the court had desired to acquire the rest of the 0.57 acres from MTC and the latter had now agreed to give away the property. With this, the High Court would be in a position to utilise the entire extent of 1.83 acresfor its infrastructural facilities, the A-G said. After recording his submissions, the judges granted three weeks’ time for the Commissioner of Land Administration to ascertain the value of the land so that the government could be directed to pay the consideration and purchase the property for the court.
The two PIL petitions were heard actively last by a Full Bench comprising Justices Kaul, T.S. Sivagnanam and R. Mahadevan between September 2016 and January 2017. Then, the judges had expressed anguish and great concern over non-allocation of sufficient funds for the judiciary.
“The aggravated position is apparent from the fact that even functioning funds for Tamil Nadu State Judicial Academy are not available and thus two training programmes have already been postponed. As far as centrally sponsored schemes are concerned, the inaction and inability of the State government to properly complete the paper work has resulted in almost ₹150 crore of central funds having lapsed. The blame rests at the door of the State government.
“We may note that the primary responsibility of creating judicial infrastructure vests with the State government though the Central government lends a helping hand in the form of various schemes. We have a concern whether the State government is now faced with a financial emergency and proposes to declare it as such, in which case, funding for all aspects of governance would be affected,” the full Bench’s November 2016 order read.