Law Commission Chairman opposed to SC benches elsewhere

Chairperson of the National Law Commission Justice (retd) Ajit Shah on Friday said he was not in favour of setting up benches of the Supreme Court in various parts of the country.

"More benches would not serve the purpose," Shah said. He was speaking at a symposium at the Bombay High Court on 'Whether there should be SC benches in various parts of the country', organised by the Advocates Association of Western India (AAWI).

Shah said the SC has today become another appellate court, with "error correction" having become its "main work". On the other hand, he noted, the petitions under Article 32 of the Constitution had decreased considerably while tax and commercial litigations had increased.

"Today the Supreme Court is overloaded," he said, adding that some 63,000 cases were filed last year and 65,000 this year. Creation of benches presumes that number of cases will go down but that is not the case, he said.