Haryana government has once again raised the demand for separate High Court (HC) for the state. Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Wednesday said that a separate HC for Haryana should be set up in the Punjab and Haryana High Court building, dividing the area in the ratio of 60 and 40.

He said that the ratio of judges should be 50:50 until the issue of a court for Chandigarh Administration is settled.
Stating this in Gurugram, Khattar said that Haryana had more cases in the HC and he had written to the Supreme Court (SC) to increase the number of judges.

A letter has also been written to the Chief Justice of the SC to set up a separate bench of the HC in southern Haryana, he added.

A few months back, the Haryana State Legislative Assembly had also passed a resolution seeking separate HC for the state. During a one-day special session called on 4 May, 2017 to pass the Good and Service Tax Bill (GST), the resolution for separate HC was moved by the Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ram Bilas Sharma and it was passed unaimously by all parties.

The resolution has been passed requesting the Parliament to effect an appropriate amendment in the Punjab re-organisation Act, 1966 to provide for the creation of a separate HC for Haryana within Chandigarh.

According to the resolution, even after completion of Haryana’s 50 years of existence as a separate state, a separate HC was not provided, while the people of Haryana had suffered in manifold ways, including through delays in the disposal of their cases due to heavy workload in the common HC.

CM during his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 22 April, 2017 in Delhi, had also urged the latter to accord top priority to setting up of a separate HC for Haryana during the ongoing Swaran Jayanti Year of the state.

Haryana has been demanding a separate HC for itself, stating that even smaller north-eastern states have their own HCs. Haryana, which shares its HC with Punjab (the Punjab and Haryana HC), has been seeking a separate HC for itself in Chandigarh.

It wants the present joint HC of the two states to be bifurcated and a separate Haryana HC to be set up.