The Registrar General of the Delhi High Court today told a Division Bench of the High Court that the Delhi High Court Bar Association’s (DHCBA) plea against the constitution of a judges’ committee to examine enhancement of district courts’ pecuniary jurisdiction is not maintainable.
A Bench of Justices Anil Kshetarpal and Tejas Karia asked the High Court administration to file a note stating their objections to the plea moved by DHCBA.
Advocate Amit George, appearing for the High Court's administrative side, earlier said that they have an objection to the maintainability of the DHCBA's petition. The Bench then granted time to the High Court for filing of a note and listed the matter for consideration on June 1.
Meanwhile, the counsel representing the Coordination Committee of All District Court Bar Associations also made similar arguments against the maintainability of DHCBA's plea.
The Court asked the Coordination Committee to file an application for impleadment since they have not been made a party by the DHCBA.
The DHCBA filed the plea challenging a September 2025 decision of the full court of the Delhi High Court to constitute a committee of judges to examine the proposal to increase the pecuniary jurisdiction of district courts from ₹2 crore to ₹20 crores.
At present, the committee consists of Justices V Kameswar Rao, NW Sambre, Dinesh Mehta, Vivek Chaudhary, Prathiba M Singh and Navin Chawla. Notably, the DHCBA has also made this committee also a party to its case.
The Coordination Committee of the All District Courts Bar Association of Delhi had in May 2025 had written to the Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal and members of Law Commission requesting the enhancement of pecuniary jurisdiction of district courts from ₹2 crores to ₹20 crores.
A committee of Delhi High Court judges was then constituted to consider the issue and to interact with the stakeholders and make recommendations. However, the DHCBA has been opposing the move.
It is DHCBA's case that the judges' committee was constituted after the full court took cognisance of the letter written by the coordination committee of all district court bar associations.
DHCBA has argued that the letter was addressed to the Union Ministry of Law and not to High Court Chief Justice.
It is also clear that the Ministry of Law did not seek either comments or initiate the process, but the full court took cognisance of the letter issued by the Co-ordination Committee, the DHCBA said.
It added that no reason has been provided by the High Court about why it constituted the judges' committee.