New Delhi, Mar 1 : Delhi High Court is keen to have the district courts pull up their socks, and shape up. Punctuality of judicial officers, working atmosphere, and cleanliness were on their check-list.

Several Delhi High Court judges led by Acting Chief Justice (ACJ) Gita Mittal today carried out surprise inspection of the six district courts here, reports PTI.

A similar exercise was carried out in August last year, when the judges had made surprise checks at all the district courts in the national capital and found that several of them had not even started functioning as the judicial officers were late.

The judges’ teams, including Justices Ravindra Bhat, Sanjiv Khanna, G S Sistani, S Muralidhar, Vipin Sanghi and Hima Kohli, went to all the District Courts.

ACJ Mittal visited the Saket court complex here along with Justice Kohli to get a first-hand account of punctuality of judges, working atmosphere and cleanliness.

“Delhi High Court, being the supervisory authority of the subordinate courts here, today went on to inspect all the six district court of the city. Its purpose was to check whether the judicial officers were sitting on time. It was also to ensure that no inconvenience is caused to the litigants, lawyers and also the judicial officers themselves,” sources close to the Delhi High Court registry said.

During the earlier inspection, Justice Mittal had taken an auto-rickshaw to reach the Patiala House court’s complex  in order to keep the special operation confidential. However, this time the high court judges used their private vehicles.

The sources also said that other senior judges carried out similar inspections of trial court complexes at Patiala house, Tis Hazari, Karkardooma, Rohini and Dwarka.

The High Court, in the recent times, has taken strict view of laxity and impropriety on the part of the judicial officers of the subordinate judiciary.

[Now, if only the other High Courts in the country start similar exercises. It may be a Herculean task, but it’s high time somebody cleaned out the Aegean stables!]

  Delhi High Court, development, justice