Sunday, March 27, 2016

Lucknow Bench - Historical Necessity

This is the third post of the series 'LegalTrek'. The last post was about, how Allahabad High Court was established and this post is about why there is a bench of the Allahabad High Court at Lucknow.
Lucknow Bech Allahabad High Court - courtesy Allahabad High Court official website

LegalTrek
How I Became A Lawyer।। Allahabad High Court Is Born।। Lucknow Bench - Historical Necessity।।

Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court
At present,  a Bench of the Allahabad High Court also sits at Lucknow. There are historical reasons for the same.

Oudh came under British suzerainty in 1856. At that time, regulations could be made for the three presidency towns but there was no power to frame regulations for the newly acquired territories. The Governor General in Council, with his seat in Calcutta, started governing them in his executive capacity. They came to be known as ‘Non-Regulation territory’. Oudh also became one such territory.

A judicial commissioner's court was established in Oudh in 1856. It was its highest court. In 1902, Oudh and the North-Western Provinces were merged in one Province, known as the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, but the judicial administration remained separate. The Commissioner's court continued to be the highest court in Oudh.

The status of the Commissioner's court was raised to Oudh Chief Court by the Oudh Court Act of 1925.  It always sat at Lucknow. It was merged with the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad on July 26, 1948 by United Provinces High Court (Amalgamation) Order, 1948. At that time it was thought proper that it should continue to sit at Lucknow. This is the reason for the Bench at Lucknow.

MC Setalvad was the first Attorney General and the first Chairman of the Law Commission. He has given his opinion about benches of the High Courts in his fourth and fourteenth reports. He has also talked about Lucknow bench in his autobiography 'My Life: Law and Other Things'. In the next few posts, we will talk about his view on the Lucknow bench, my views on the benches of the courts and some good auto/biographies from the legal world.

#AllahabadHighCourt #LucknowBench
Allahabad High Court

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