Chief Justice of India Surya Kant said lawyers from Leh and Kargil will soon appear virtually before the Supreme Court from the Ladakh Bench. This move helps litigants avoid travelling to Delhi. Justice Kant said, “In this way, the distance will no longer stand between people of Ladakh and the country.”
Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on Sunday said lawyers from Leh and Kargil would soon be able to appear virtually before the Supreme Court from the Ladakh Bench of the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, news agency Press Trust of India reported.
All cases originating from Ladakh would be listed on a single day and heard through video-conferencing, saving lawyers and litigants the time, cost and hardship of travelling to Delhi, the Chief Justice said while inaugurating the Ladakh Bench in Leh.
Calling the inauguration a historic step, Justice Kant referred to the establishment of a Special Court in Leh in 1870. He said that while the institution had passed into history, the geographical challenges that limited access to justice had continued 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 Chief Justice said adding the name “Ladakh” to the high court after the region became a Union Territory in 2019 was important, but the move remained largely symbolic. “A name on a court's letterhead is not the same as a court at one's doorstep,” he said.
Justice Kant said the bench belonged equally to Leh and Kargil, the Union Territory's two districts. Its purpose would be fulfilled only when people across Ladakh developed a sense of ownership over the institution, he added.
According to PTI, the Chief Justice said that once video-conferencing facilities were set up at the bench, the Supreme Court would list all cases originating from Ladakh on a single day and hear them virtually on a day-to-day basis. This would allow members of the Leh and Kargil bar associations to argue cases before the Supreme 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 the true measure of a court was not its geographical elevation but its accessibility to the people it served. “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.
The Chief Justice also recalled the role of village institutions and customary practices in resolving disputes. He said the region had long relied on community-based systems to ensure fairness and settle grievances.
He identified technology and legal aid as essential tools for overcoming geographical barriers to justice. “In a land of such vast distances, technology can do what no road ever could,” he said.
Justice Kant described legal aid as 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. He expressed 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 Chief Justice spoke of a young child studying in a classroom in Kargil or Nubra who might one day argue a case before the court or 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.
The new bench and the proposed virtual hearings are aimed at bringing the High Court and the Supreme Court closer to people across Ladakh by reducing the geographical, financial and practical barriers to accessing justice.