High Court Sections

The High Court of J&K was established in 1928. Till early 90's it was situated at Mubarakmandi complex but after 1994, the High Court complex was shifted to Janipura Jammu. It started functioning with 3 Judges only, which was increased to 5 in 1968.At present the sanctioned strength is 25 Judges including 19 Permanent Judges and 6 Additional Judges . There are about 470 employees working in the High Court. It has 7 court rooms. The High Court moves with the annual "Darbar" from Jammu to Srinagar and back, thus fuctioning for 6 months during summer at Srinagar & for 6 months during winters at Jammu. At least 2 courts function at both places at any given time, irrespective of the 'Darbar'.

The High Court deals with cases pertaining to Writ as well as Civil Jurisdiction. There are 7 sections in the High Court for dealing with various types of cases.These are:

• Letter Patent Appeal (LPA)
• Service Writ Petition (SWP)
• Other Writ Petition (OWP)
• Civil
• Criminal
• Civil Original Suit (COS) (Now under District Courts)
• Habeus Corpus Petition (HCP)

In addition to the above, there are other sections like The Judicial Section, Administrative Section, The Accounts Section, The Records Section, The Statistical Section , The Service Section, The Law Reporting Section and The Registry.

In 1994, a Computer section was established in The High Court with the aim of bringing about a transformation in the work culture and to reap the benefits of the latest tools of Information Technology. During the last 5 years many of the functions which were hitherto performed manually have been brought under the ambit of computerisation.Some of the major areas of application are:

• Filing Counter
• Daily & Weekly Cause list
• Monthly Payroll
• GPF Accounts
• Personnel Information System
• Judges Library
• Caselaw
• Connectivity between J&K High Court, other High Courts and The Supreme Court
• Administrative Functions
• Usage of E-mail and Internet

The use of computers has resulted in bringing down the number of pending cases and has brought about transparency in the whole process of case Filing, Allocation, Hearing and Disposal