REPORT ON- THE VISIT TO THE

HONBLE HIGH COURT OF GUJARAT

SUMMARY
This High Court visit has been divided in two parts
(a) Witnessing the proceedings in the Honble Court rooms, and
(b) Interactive session with the Deputy Registrar of the Honble High Court.
As required under the obligation of part (a), we were required to attend proceedings in
different court rooms and observe the same in the Courts.
The part (b) of the High Court visit consisted of an Interactive Session with the deputy
registrar of the Honble High Court. He discussed with us different topics related to the
practical aspects of the procedure by which cases are filed in the High Court including the
different jurisdictions which the High Court has, Original Jurisdiction of High Court,
Mediation, Letters Patent Appeal, First and Second Appeals respectively. The details of the
High Court visit shall be discussed in the subsequent parts of this report.

COURT PROCEEDINGS

As discussed previously, the first part of the High Court was to visit different Court rooms at
the Gujarat High Court and witness the different Court proceedings that were then going on
in the Court rooms. The details of the proceedings are as follows1. The first Court that I visited during my High Court visit was that of the Honble Chief
Justice of the Gujarat High Court Honble Mr. Justice R. Subhash Reddy. In his Court, the
Division Bench had been constituted and it was hearing various matters relating to Public
Interest Litigation (PIL). The case that was being conducted was a service matter. Before
looking into the merits of the case, the Bench directed one of the parties to submit to the
other party, the money which had been received by the former from the latter. One of the
parties to the case was a state body; the next hearing of the matter was posted after 4 weeks
from that day.
2. The next Court visited by me was of Honble Justice Mr. Paresh Upadhyay. I witnessed
the proceedings of the matter relating to Criminal Law. One of the parties to the case was a
bank and the case related to the forgery of the signatures made by the defendant on a cheque
which was to be encashed from the bank. Due to the charges of a forgery which had been
made on the defendant by the plaintiff bank, the issue that the Court was examining related to
whether the signature made by the defendant actually belonged to him or not.
I witnessed that many police officers were also present in the Court at that point of time and
were assisting the lawyers in making their arguments. During the course of submissions
made by the counsels, the counsel for the defendant sought the leave of the Court to cite a
previous Bombay High Court judgment to support his arguments. But his request was
dismissed by the Honble judge who was of the opinion that the point relating to which the
Bombay High Court judgment dealt with was different and was not applicable to the present
matter which the counsel was arguing on.
3. Another Court which I visited was the Court of Honble Justice Mrs. Abhilasha Kumari.
The cases relating to service matters were being heard by her at that point of time.
The proceedings witnessed by me related to certain rules and regulations related to service by
the government employees as framed by the Government of Gujarat. An employee had been
dismissed from employment by the State of Gujarat on the grounds that he had been
imprisoned for a period of more than 48 hours. The arguments put forth by the counsel for
the appellant were that his client could not have been directly dismissed from service because
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as per the Gujarat Government Service Rules, such dismissal does not take place if the
employee has been permitted to join the service after his imprisonment.
Another argument put forth by the counsel was that natural justice had been violated in the
case as the dismissal of the employee could have been done only after giving him a due
hearing which had not been done in this case and moreover, the Service Rules call for only a
suspension of the employee during the period of imprisonment so he therefore could not
have been dismissed from service unless any act amounting to disciplinary misconduct was
proved against him. The counsel referred to a judgment of the Calcutta High Court to support
his submissions on the basis that the rules for service as applicable in the states of Gujarat
and West Bengal respectively are similar to each other.
While noting that the view of the Calcutta High Court has only a persuasive value and is not
binding on the Court, the Court asked the counsel for the State of Gujarat (the respondent in
the case) to look for any decision on the point given by the Gujarat High Court.

Lecture session
The second part of the High Court visit was an Interactive Session with a person who was a
member of the staff working at the office of the Registrar General of the Gujarat High Court.
The session was conducted at Court No. 1 of the Gujarat High Court.
The lecturer discussed with us the practicalities of filing cases with the Registry of the
Gujarat High Court, the different types of jurisdictions which the High Court exercises, First
and Second Appeals to the Court, Mediation, and Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of
India. The different aspects that were discussed are as follows(i) Procedure for filing of cases
The cases filed in the Gujarat High Court have to be filed before the Central Filing Registry.
Different technicalities are checked by the registry such as the admissibility of the case and
other particulars such as Court fees etc are also checked. If the case has been correctly filed,
then a Case No. is allotted to the matter and it shall also be classified according to its nature
such as Civil Application, Civil Appeal, and Writ Petition etc. The cases are then listed before

the Gujarat High Court based upon the roster which is decided by the Honble Chief Justice
of the High Court of Gujarat.
(ii) Jurisdictions of the High Court
Talking about the types of jurisdictions exercised by the High Court, the lecturer mentioned
that there are 2 types of jurisdictions namely- (A) Original Jurisdiction and (B) Appellate
Jurisdiction.
The Original jurisdiction of the High Court is exercised by it by the issue of writs by it to any
person or authority which may include the Government as well. This jurisdiction is exercised
by the High Court under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India. It extends to other
matters too such as contempt of court, probate and matrimonial cases.
The Appellate jurisdiction of the Court comprises of the Courts powers to hear appeals and
is of 2 types- civil and criminal. The civil type covers cases which have been decided by the
District judges or the Munsif Court while the criminal type covers cases which have been
decided by the Sessions and the Assistant Sessions judges respectively.

(iii) Appeal to the High Court

The instructor also discussed with us, the types of appeal that the High Court hears while
exercising its appellate jurisdiction. Sections 96 and 100 of the Code of Civil Procedure,
1908 deal with the provisions of the First and Second Appeals respectively. Both the sections
have mentioned specific grounds and only on those grounds can the appeal lie to the High
Court against the decision given by the lower Courts. Also, not all but only certain orders of
the lower Court are appealable to the High Court. First appeal may be heard by a Court
subordinate to the High Court but a Second Appeal always lies to the High Court.
(iv) Letters Patent Appeal
As told to us by the instructor, Letters Patent Appeal is an intra court appeal and is an appeal
from the decision of a single judge bench to a Division bench (2 judge bench) within the
same Court. Generally, a judgment given by the High Court under Article 226 of the Indian
Constitution is appealable under this category while a judgment given under Article 227 is
not so appealable.
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(v) Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India

Article 226 of the Constitution of India deals with the writ jurisdictions of the High Court.
The writ jurisdiction of the High Court is wider than that of the Supreme Court because the
writ jurisdiction of the Supreme Court under Article 32 of Indian Constitution is confined to
matters involving the violation of fundamental rights only while the writ jurisdiction of the
High Court can also be invoked for the violation of any other legal rights and not just in the
case of fundamental rights of the citizens of India. Article 227 of the Indian Constitution
provides for the supervisory jurisdiction of the High Court. It states that the High Court has
the power to supervise over all courts and tribunals which are located within the territory that
falls within the High Courts jurisdiction.
(v) Division Bench
Discussing about the Division Bench of the High Court, the instructor told us that the
constitution of the division bench in the Gujarat High Court has been provided for under the
Gujarat High Court Rules, 1993. The Bench is constituted only for some matters and
basically hears appeals against the orders and decrees of the lower Courts. The single bench
also has the power to hear appeals from such orders and decrees and the Schedule to these
Rules enumerates those matters the orders and decrees relating to which can be heard in
appeal by the High Court. The Division bench is also constituted by the Chief Justice of the
Court in cases which involve decision to be given on a substantial question of law.

OBSERVATIONS
Following are the main observations made by me during the High Court visit1. As a whole, the Gujarat High Court seemed to be less overburdened with cases compared
to the other High Courts and the Supreme Court of India.
2. Both the Single judge and the Division judge benches were in function at the Gujarat high
Court. The Chief Justice of the High Court was hearing matters related to PIL as a part of a
Division Bench in the Court.
3. The judges of the High Court were quick to criticize the advocates for not performing their
duty properly by making mistakes such as not being well-versed with the facts, not appearing

in the Court on time etc. The judges also were not keen on giving adjournments on flimsy
reasons when requested by the advocates and accordingly refused.

CONCLUSION
The overall experience of the visit to the Gujarat High Court was a good and informative one
giving a deep insight into different practical aspects such as how actually the High Court
functions, the decorum that one should maintain inside courtrooms and the professional
manner in which the advocates are expected to conduct themselves in Court and argue for
their clients. The instructor explained different concepts in a simple way making them easy
for us to understand and thus the lecture given by him proved to be an additional opportunity
for us to gain further clarity on the working of the High Court while clearing any doubts on
the same.