The Jharkhand High Court today started functioning from its newly built building at a cost of over Rs 600 crore. 

It crossed an important landmark with the start of judicial function beginning today( June 12, 2023). It was inaugurated by President Droupadi Murmu on May 24, 2023.

The new high court building has 25 air-conditioned courtrooms and two halls for lawyers with a sitting capacity of 1,200 people each, along with 540 chambers divided into three blocks - A, B, C.

Nearly 75 designated and senior lawyers have been allotted chambers, each measuring 9X15 feet with a toilet. A senior lawyer was to deposit a security sum of Rs one lakh and has to pay a monthly sum of Rs 5000 per month for maintenance.

Similarly, a lawyer has to pay a sum of Rs one lakh as a security deposit and pay Rs 2,500 per month for maintenance.

In all, there were 24 courtrooms. At the moment, 19 courtrooms were functional in view of the number of judges available.

Spread over 90 acres of land the entire campus is designed and constructed keeping in mind the principle of energy conservation. The afforestation along with the presence of a variety of trees makes it truly a green campus.

However, the distance between the courtrooms and chambers of lawyers is 400-500 metres. While this is expected to make lawyers walk a considerable distance every day to perform his/ her judicial duty, not all are happy.

“It will be difficult to walk so much. Even if we walk from our chamber to the courtroom with Munsis( assistants) carrying files and documents of a case, we can not return and take another set of files and documents of another case in another court. It’s a problem”, says Rajiv Kumar Sinha, Ex Assistant Solicitor General.

A senior lawyer who does not want to be named cribbed exposing his point of view of the chamber allotted to him. In fact, the size of the chamber of a lawyer and a senior lawyer is almost the same. 

But unlike chambers of lawyers, the chambers of senior lawyers carried toilet in 9X15 feet chamber.” It is difficult to imagine how can one sit there when there is a broken seal in the toilet inside the chamber - or the lack of a seal- in the caulk or wax ring around my toilet. It means water, urine, and other waste can find their way through the crevices, allowing bacteria to grow. The bacterium then can cause the foul odour”, I fear.