Nagaland to finally get a high court

After years of lobbying by the North-East, the Centre has finally decided to establish a third high court at Kohima in Nagaland. Chief Justice of Supreme Court K G Balasubramaniam will lay the foundation stone on April 7.

A top government source supervising the project said construction would be completed in about a year’s time. Five judges will be appointed to hear new cases and dispose of the ones pending with the Kohima branch of the Gauhati High Court. Besides Assam, Sikkim is the only other state in the region to have a high court. However, the Gauhati HC has six outlying branches in the six states apart from the principal seat in Guwahati. The Kohima bench was set up in 1972 after the enactment of the North East Areas Act, 1971.

A decision to give Nagaland its own high court was taken due to the huge backlog of cases in the benches of the Gauhati HC. Till 2003, the entire region was being served by only 19 judges, which was subsequently raised to 24 by the Ministry of Law and Justice.