CJI announces virtual access to Supreme Court for Leh, Kargil lawyers

Chief Justice of India Justice Surya Kant on Sunday said lawyers from Leh and Kargil would soon be able to virtually access the Supreme Court from the Ladakh Bench of the High Court.

All matters originating from Ladakh would be listed on a single day and heard through video-conferencing, sparing lawyers and litigants the time, cost and hardship of travelling to Delhi, Justice Kant said as he inaugurated the Ladakh Bench of the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh here.

Describing the inauguration as a historic step, the CJI referred to the establishment of a Special Court in Leh in 1870, observing that while the institution had passed into history, the geographical challenges that restricted access to justice persisted for generations.

"For close to a century, the high court that served Ladakh sat beyond the Great Himalayas, reachable in winter only by air," he said.

The CJI said the insertion of the name 'Ladakh' in a high court after it became a Union Territory in 2019 was an important step, but the gesture remained largely symbolic.

"A name on a court's letterhead is not the same as a court at one's doorstep," he said.

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Justice Kant emphasised that the bench belongs equally to Leh and Kargil – the two districts in the Union Territory - and said its purpose would be served only when people in every corner of Ladakh start to feel a sense of ownership over the institution.

He also said that once video-conferencing facilities have been set up at the bench, the Supreme Court would list all matters originating from Ladakh on a single day and hear them on a day-to-day basis virtually.

The arrangement, the CJI said, would enable members of the Leh and Kargil bar associations to argue cases before the top court without leaving Ladakh.

"In this way, the distance will no longer stand between people of Ladakh and the highest Court of our country," he said.

Justice Kant said that the true measure of a court is not its geographical elevation but its accessibility to the people it serves.

"We are some 3,500 metres above the sea, and I am told no high court in our country has ever sat higher. Of course, what matters today is not how high this court sits. What is important is how close it now stands to the people it serves," he said.

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The CJI recalled the role of village institutions and customary practices in resolving disputes, noting that the region had long relied on community-based mechanisms to uphold fairness and settle grievances.

On improving access to justice, he identified technology and legal aid as two essential instruments for overcoming geographical barriers.

"In a land of such vast distances, technology can do what no road ever could," he said. The CJI also underlined the importance of legal aid, calling it a constitutional promise that no citizen should be denied justice because of poverty or disability.

He stressed the need for legal awareness camps, para-legal volunteers, affordable legal representation, lok adalats and timely compensation for victims of crime.

"Access to justice, after all, begins not in the court's compound, but at the litigant's door," he said, expressing confidence that the Ladakh Legal Services Authority and the court's Legal Services Committee would work together to reach people awaiting justice in remote areas.

The CJI spoke of a young child studying in a classroom in Kargil or Nubra who might one day argue a case before the court or even serve as a judge on its bench.

"When that day comes, we will know that this bench has not merely arrived in Ladakh, but taken root here," Justice Kant said.