New judicial complex in 3 years, to house 55 courts

GURGAON: The city will get a new judicial complex, named the Justice Tower. Three years since its foundation stone was laid, construction work will begin on Saturday. It will take another three years to complete, a senior judge said.
Expected to be the biggest district-level judicial complex in northern India, it will have two towers, housing 55 district and sessions courts, which will come up near mini-secretariat.At present, there are 45 courts in Gurgaon, which operate from three different premises, with 65,000 pending cases.
On Saturday, Justices AK Mittal and Suryakant Sharma of Punjab and Haryana high court will inaugurate the construction work for the complex, spread over more than seven acres. Though the initial cost was estimated at Rs 113 crore, it would go up to Rs 225 crore by the time the construction ends.
Later in the day, they will lay the foundation stone for the sub-court in Sohna that will house eight courts and will be built on 4.4 acres at the cost of Rs 22 crore.
“Work will start from Saturday and the complex is likely to be ready in the next three years,” said district and sessions judge Harnam Singh Thakur. “The new complex will have all modern amenities and will cater to the future needs of the city,” he added.
Each of the floors will have a waiting area and seating arrangement for assistant district attorneys. The ground floor will have a single-window care centre for all legal issues and a centralised complaint filing system. On the first floor, there will be a library and a bar room with a seating capacity of 1,500. For the first time, women advocates will get a separate bar room. “The new court premises will have multi-level parking with an arrangement to accommodate a large number of vehicles,” said Thakur.
To strengthen the security arrangement and avoid any untoward incident, provisions have been made for separate entry and lift for the accused coming to the courts. The centre will also have 20 mediation centres, as compared to just six in other districts. There will also be a separate block for facilities like banks and post offices.
The bar association has welcomed the move. “At present, four judges sit at the mini-secretariat, four at Vikas Sadan and other judges in the district court complex. People have no choice but to move around the three premises even for minor matters,” said Rajiv Kaushik, member of the association.
The judiciary includes a district and sessions judge, a district judge of family court, seven additional session judges, an additional chief judicial magistrate, a chief judicial magistrate and 29 magistrates and civil judges.