Leh High Court Bench Inaugurated by CJI Surya Kant

Leh, October 19 — Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on Sunday inaugurated the Leh High Court bench of the Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court, which at an altitude of 3,500 metres will be the highest High Court bench in the country.

The Ladakh bench will start functioning from October 21. President Droupadi Murmu had on August 28 promulgated a regulation allowing the establishment of a separate High Court bench in Leh. "The High Court has today crossed the passes to reach Ladakh, instead of asking the people of Ladakh to cross the passes to reach it," the CJI said in his inaugural address, adding that the bench had reached the people through the principle of access to justice.

What the New Leh High Court Bench Will Handle

Officials said 75 cases have initially been identified for listing before the Leh High Court bench. The Ladakh bench will function two days a week to begin with, with the judges sitting in rotation. The inaugural bench on October 21 will comprise Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court Chief Justice Pushpendra Singh Bhati and Justice Sanjay Parihar.

CJI Kant announced that the Supreme Court would list all cases from Ladakh on a single day once adequate video conferencing facilities were in place for lawyers appearing before the Leh High Court bench. He said the arrangement would spare litigants from Ladakh the time and expense of travelling to New Delhi to pursue their cases.

CJI Surya Kant: Access to Justice Reaches the Leh High Court Bench

CJI Surya Kant said he was hopeful the Leh High Court bench would encourage a new generation from Ladakh to take up the legal profession as a career option. The inaugural function was attended by Supreme Court judges Justice M M Sundresh, Justice P S Narasimha and Justice Arun Palli, Attorney General for India R Venkataramani, Ladakh Lieutenant Governor Vinay Kumar Saxena and Chief Justice Pushpendra Singh Bhati, who will head the inaugural sitting.

Background to the Leh High Court Bench

The Jammu and Kashmir High Court was renamed the Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court after the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir's special status and the bifurcation of the state into two Union Territories in August 2019. The Leh High Court bench marks the first time the region's litigants will have regular access to High Court sittings without leaving Ladakh.

Legal observers say the new bench addresses a long-felt need in a region where geography has historically been a barrier to justice. With winter closing the high passes for months at a time, litigants from remote parts of Ladakh have often faced arduous journeys to reach the courts at Srinagar or Jammu. The combination of a permanent bench in Leh and dedicated Supreme Court listing days is expected to reduce both the cost and the uncertainty of litigation for the Union Territory's residents. For now, residents of the Union Territory will be watching how the two-day-a-week sittings evolve and whether the case backlog begins to clear once the bench is fully operational.

The inauguration was attended by senior members of the judiciary and the executive, underlining the institutional weight behind the move. As the bench begins its sittings on October 21, attention will turn to how quickly the promised video conferencing infrastructure comes up — a step the CJI himself linked to the larger goal of making the Supreme Court more accessible to litigants from the country's remotest regions.