Chief Justice of India B R Gavai inaugurated the new Kolhapur circuit bench of the Bombay High Court. The bench will handle cases from six districts, reducing the need for litigants to travel 380 km to Mumbai.
Kolhapur: On August 17, Chief Justice of India B R Gavai inaugurated the new circuit bench of the Bombay High Court at Kolhapur in Maharashtra. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde also attended the inauguration ceremony.
This is the fourth bench of the Bombay High Court, set up after years of demand from lawyers and litigants in western Maharashtra and Konkan.
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People from these areas had to travel nearly 380 kilometres to Mumbai for hearings, which caused great inconvenience. The establishment of this new bench is expected to ease their burden.
At present, the Bombay High Court functions with multiple benches. Apart from the main principal bench in Mumbai, there are benches at Nagpur (covering the Vidarbha region), Aurangabad (officially renamed as Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, covering Marathwada region), and a separate bench in Goa.
With Kolhapur added as the fourth, the High Court now covers a wider area for quick and easier access to justice.
On August 1, Bombay High Court Chief Justice Alok Aradhe had issued a notification declaring Kolhapur as a circuit bench. As per the notification, the Kolhapur bench will officially start functioning from Monday, August 18, with one division bench and two single benches.
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The jurisdiction of the Kolhapur bench will extend over six districts — Satara, Sangli, Solapur, Kolhapur, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg. Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg fall in the Konkan coastal belt, while the others are from western Maharashtra.
This makes the new bench extremely important for local litigants, as it will reduce the pressure on the Mumbai bench and provide faster access to justice in these six districts.
The division bench at Kolhapur will be headed by Justice M S Karnik and Justice Sharmila Deshmukh.
They are expected to hear major matters including Public Interest Litigations (PILs), civil writ petitions, family court appeals, contempt appeals, first appeals, and other important civil and criminal matters arising from the six districts.
In addition, two single benches will also be operational at Kolhapur. The first single bench, presided over by Justice S G Dige, will deal with criminal cases such as criminal appeals, criminal revision applications, bail applications, and other related criminal matters.
The second single bench, headed by Justice S G Chapalgaonkar, will handle civil matters, including civil writ petitions, civil applications, and other cases that can be decided by a single judge.
This structural distribution of work between the benches is designed to make the legal process smoother and quicker for both litigants and lawyers.
The opening of the Kolhapur bench is therefore seen as a significant step in decentralising the judicial process in Maharashtra and reducing the burden on Mumbai, Nagpur, and Aurangabad benches.
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