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Chief Justice of India hoped that the new building for the Telangana High Court, for which he laid the foundation stone at Rajendra Nagar on Wednesday, would not suffer from issues like inadequate wash rooms for women and lack of proper parking facilities for the differently-abled.
Addressing the gathering after unveiling the plaque, the CJI said that public spaces often reflect pre-existing social inequalities in the society, and infrastructure plays a significant role in main-streaming communities and groups in the society.
Justice Chandrachud said, “Our infrastructure sometimes reflects certain signs of exclusion like lack of ramps for differently-abled people, special rooms for lactating mothers and tactile parks for the visually-challenged. Such lack of facilities makes these people feel that courts are not meant for them. These are vestiges of a patriarchal system.”
The CJI hoped that the new HC building would put a decisive end to such issues. Describing the construction of the building as watershed in the history of Telangana, Justice Chandrachud recalled that he noticed during his stint as the HC judge that considerable number of district courts had lack of wash rooms for women lawyers and even judges.
The Supreme Court, through Centre for Research and Planning, put out a report on the state of Indian judiciary and showed that there is a significant defect not only in district courts but also at the HC level.
Virtually inaugurating 32 e-seva kendras in different districts of the State, the CJI said that the judicial infrastructure should be able to reach out to people unlike during British rule when citizens had to reach out to the courts for justice since the judiciary then was expected to wield power of the sovereignty of British.
Rooms for women
In the backdrop of more women getting recruited as judicial officers and taking up advocacy as profession, it was important to create new bar rooms for them separately and spaces where they can work, interact and mentor each other.
He appealed to judges and senior advocates to mentor juniors. Supreme Court Judges P.S. Narasimha, Sanjay Kumar and S.V. Bhatti and Telangana HC Chief Justice Alok Aradhe and judges of the HC were present.
