Will Haryana get its own high court?

The department of justice in the ministry of law and justice said this to activist SC Agrawal, who had sought various information, including the issue of renaming of high courts, under RTI.

Since Haryana was carved out of Punjab in 1966, the two states have been sharing a common high court in Chandigarh. Haryana has been demanding a separate high court citing increasing number of litigants from the state for many years, while Punjab is not very keen on this. 

Haryana has also demanded increase in the ratio of judges from 60:40 to 50:50. The high court has a sanctioned strength of 68 judges. As recently as April this year, Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda had raised this demand while addressing a conference of chief ministers of states and chief justices of high courts at Vigyan Bhavan in the national capital.

The conference was presided over by prime minister Manmohan Singh while chief justice of India Altamas Kabir and former union law minister Ashwani Kumar were also present. Hooda had said that a separate high court was the constitutional right of Haryana and it will fulfill aspirations of people of the state and strengthen the judicial system. 

He had said this can be realised by bifurcating existing premises, judges and staff of the Punjab and Haryana high court. However, Punjab chief minister had opposed the demands of Hooda for a separate high court for Haryana at Chandigarh.

Newer states like Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Chattisgarh, which were created after Haryana, have their own high courts now. Recently, the states of Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura also got their own high courts.