Court room layout in Supreme Court to change again (for now)

The Supreme Court had changed the court room lay out in a bid to arrest over-crowding of court rooms.

Many court rooms were re-numbered and some of the court rooms were made bigger by adding additional court rooms. However, one week into the experiment, the new layout has been causing inconvenience to lawyers. While locating the new court rooms became difficult, accessing some of the new court rooms, particularly courts 7 and 9 (which can be reached only by a narrow staircase) became particularly difficult.

In fact, the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) had expressed its reservations about court rooms 7 and 9 even before the court re-opened. According to SCBA Secretary Gaurav Bhatia,

“In the last week of June when the new layout was shared with the SCBA, the SCBA had requested the Hon’ble CJI not to make new courts 7 and 9 functional till they are connected with court no. 15 by way of an over bridge. The Hon’ble Chief was kind enough to agree to our request. However one day before the reopening, the Registry informed the SCBA that new Courts 7 & 9 will also be made functional. The SCBA conveyed strong reservations regarding the implementation of the same on the first working day after summer vacation.”

Office bearers of SCBA then proceeded to request the Chief Justice of India (CJI) to make  some temporary changes to the court room layout. Bhatia says,

“The President, Vice President and myself met the CJI and proposed a layout after taking feedback from members of the Bar who were being put to great inconvenience, especially the aged lawyers.”

The CJI has acceded to the request by SCBA and court room layout will undergo changes from coming Monday.

The major changes are:

• Court rooms 7 and 9 will be relocated till an over bridge connectivity is provided to all lawyers from court room 15.
• All court rooms will be renumbered in seriatim to make it easier to locate them.

Below is the new layout which will be effective from Monday, July 10, 2017.