A new benchmark? Two Division Benches of Madurai Bench of Madras High Court dispose of 8,612 cases in 3 months

Two Division Benches of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court have disposed of over 8,000 cases in three months. .The figure prompted the Union Ministry of Law and Justice to tweet that in disposing of these cases, the Madurai Bench had "set a new benchmark." .As per the High Court Registry, the two benches disposed of 8,612 cases between September 5 and December 2 this year. .The Bench of Justices R Mahadevan and Sathya Narayana Prasad disposed of 6,512 cases during this period. These cases included around 2,506 writ petitions, 218 writ appeals, 28 contempt petitions, 7 civil miscellaneous appeals, 5 habeas corpus petitions, 3 civil revision petitions, 3 review writ applications, 2 suits filed in appeal, 2 contempt appeals, and one second appeal. The Bench also disposed of 3,737 miscellaneous cases..The other Division Bench that initially comprised Justices Nisha Banu and N Anand Venkatesh, and later comprised Justices Venkatesh and MS Ramesh disposed of 2,100 cases during the said period. These benches disposed of 1,261 cases listed under the main category and 839 cases under the miscellaneous category. .Justice Mahadevan took over as the Administrative Judge of the Madurai Bench on September 3 this year. Within the next 20 days, he along with Justice Prasad disposed of over 2,000 cases. Several lawyers who practice before the Madurai Bench said that once the figures came to everyone's notice, the Bench was flooded with new Public Interest Litigation (PILs) and several writ petitions on issues pertaining to environment protection, encroachments on temple lands, civic issues etc..The Bench of Justices Banu and Venkatesh, and subsequently of Justices Ramesh and Venkatesh dealt primarily with habeas corpus petitions and writ appeals. In fact, noticing the large number of habeas corpus petitions before it, the Bench of Justices Ramesh and Venkatesh went through the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) website and state records to realise that the State of Tamil Nadu had been topping the list of persons detained under preventive detention laws for a decade. The Bench was prompted to say in a recent order that preventive detention laws were being "misused" by the State authorities.

A new benchmark? Two Division Benches of Madurai Bench of Madras High Court dispose of 8,612 cases in 3 months

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