Pune high court bench will help citizens save time

Senior criminal lawyer Harshad Vasantrao Nimbalkar is a name to reckon with in the legal fraternity. He has fought over 2,000 cases in various sessions courts in Pune, Baramati, Ahmednagar, Aurangabad and Solapur. A member of the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa for 2010-15, Nimbalkar has argued many cases in the Supreme Court (SC) and in high courts in Mumbai, Aurangabad, Nagpur and Delhi. He is currently the chairman of the High Court Bench Action Committee, a panel set up to pursue the demand of establishing a separate bench of the Bombay high court (HC) in Pune region. Nimbalkar speaks with DNA on the importance of establishing a HC bench in Pune.

Why do we need to have a separate bench of the Bombay HC in Pune?
The number of court cases, including the pending ones in the Bombay HC, is rising constantly. Pune ranks second after Mumbai in filing cases in the HC. Our demand is logical since a Puneite has to travel to Mumbai in order to appeal in a case or file a public interest litigation (PIL). He has to find accommodation and find a suitable lawyer, which is a time-consuming process. But if there is a bench of the Bombay HC in Pune, one need not waste time and money to travel to Mumbai.

Many times, even government and police officers have to keep their day-to-day work aside and go to Mumbai to attend court proceedings. The bench of the Bombay  HC would surely be welcomed by everyone in Pune.

What is the status of your demand to set up a bench of the HC in Pune?
Recently, the legal fraternity handed over a memorandum demanding a separate bench of the Bombay HC, to Union law minister M Veerappa Moily and chief minister Prithviraj Chavan. A Pune bench of the Bombay HC is the need of the hour as Pune is the fastest growing city in the state in terms of population, urbanisation and development. We have been garnering support of public representatives across political parties to push the demand more vigorously.

Moily and Chavan, who also heads the department of law and judiciary in the state, have assured us of positive measures on the issue. We have also decided to meet the chief justice of the Bombay HC, Mohit Shah, next month to discuss the issue with him and plead our case.

The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay HC came into existence in 1981, but why is Pune still waiting for a HC bench?
Actually the state government in 1978 passed a resolution in the assembly to establish circuit benches of the Bombay HC each in Aurangabad and Pune but only the Aurangabad bench was formed in 1981. Somehow, the matter was never taken up by authorities in Pune. During the same period, one Narayan Shankarrao Puranik had challenged the Bombay HC’s decision to establish a bench in Aurangabad but the SC had ruled in favour of the  Bombay HC.

How many cases from Pune constitute the total part of cases in the Bombay HC?
The Pune bench of the HC would cover Pune, Sangli, Satara, Kolhapur and Solapur districts. Out of these districts, one-third of the cases at the Bombay HC are filed from Pune district only. Currently, around 30,000 cases pending with the Bombay HC are from Pune region.