The Supreme Court As A Court Of Appeal

A-G KK Venugopal has suggested that the apex court only hear cases of constitutional and national importance. Instead, there should be a Court of Appeal above High Courts, with four benches of 15 judges each

- Justice (Retd) Kamaljit Singh Garewal

ROUND Table Conferences from November 1930 to December 1932 saw the official opening of the new capital of India at Delhi in February 1932. The conferences led to the passage of the Government of India Act, 1935, and with it, the setting up of the Federal Court, with its seat in Delhi.

One must admire the dramatic landscape of New Delhi, constructed by the British with our money, for which we shall ever be grateful. The majesty of the new city was described by Robert Byron, who visited Delhi in January 1932. Byron drove from the Delhi railway station, past Red Fort, Jama Masjid, Daryaganj, under Hardinge Bridge, along Hardinge Avenue through India Gate up the gentle climb to Raisina Hill, and set eyes on the spanking new ViceRegal Lodge.

He wrote: “It was expected and assumed that representatives of British Sovereignty beyond the seas shall move in a setting of proper magnificence; and that in India, particularly the temporal power shall be hedged with the divinity of earthly splendour.... and shine with a Periclean importance.”

Byron compared the architecture of New Delhi with the Italian baroque style of the 17th century, which laughed out loud, and concluded by saying how the “echoes of that laughter peals over the land, mitigating for some who hear it, the steel fury of the sun and the tragedy of conflicting efforts. While majority are deaf to all but the rights of man – whether to give or withhold them. They forget that one of those rights is beauty.”