Nearly nine years after its foundation was laid, Gurugram’s long-delayed ‘Tower of Justice’ billed as North India’s largest district court complex is finally set to open, with Chief Justice of India Surya Kant scheduled to inaugurate the seven-acre facility on July 12.
According to an order issued by the District and Sessions Judge, Gurugram, the High Court has intimated that the CJI has consented to inaugurate the newly constructed Judicial Courts Complex on Sunday, July 12. Underlining the scale of the event, the order directs all judicial officers and staff of the Gurugram Sessions Division to maintain station on July 11 and 12, with all leaves cancelled.
The inauguration closes a circle for the CJI. In January 2017, then a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Justice Surya Kant had, alongside Justice AK Mittal, launched construction of the same complex. He now returns as the country’s top judge to declare the finished building open.
When the Haryana Government announced the project in 2017, it promised completion within three years at a cost of about Rs 133 crore. The complex was designed as two centrally air-conditioned towers of eight and seven storeys, housing 55 courtrooms against the 45 functioning in the existing premises, along with conference halls and public facilities. Instead, the project hung fire for the better part of a decade, its cost ballooning to roughly Rs 295 crore.
The delay drew sharp judicial scrutiny this year.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court took suo motu cognisance of the stalled work, and a Division Bench repeatedly pulled up the state. After an earlier May 15 deadline lapsed, the Bench in May ordered Haryana to complete the building and hand it over to the District and Sessions Judge by June 19, warning that contempt notices would follow against the Chief Secretary and the Engineer-in-Chief if the deadline was missed. The state, which had pleaded for time till June-end citing “practical difficulties," was let off with Rs 10,000 in costs.
The urgency sharpened after a major fire tore through the record room of the Old Judicial Complex on May 24, destroying large volumes of old case files, gutting courtrooms and retiring chambers, and causing a partial structural collapse. Ten fire tenders were pressed into service; no casualties were reported. An FIR was registered at Shivaji Nagar police station on the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s complaint under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, with investigators yet to rule out sabotage.
In the aftermath, around 21 courts were shifted to a makeshift arrangement at the PWD (B&R) Guest House in Civil Lines, where hearings resumed within a day.
The new complex is not without controversy. The District Bar Association has objected that the building makes no provision for lawyer chambers a demand it says it has raised since 2015 and has sought the CJI’s intervention.
