PRAYAGRAJ The Allahabad High Court (HC) has issued a notification stating that the terms ‘district judiciary’ and ‘trial courts’ shall be used instead of ‘subordinate judiciary’ and ‘subordinate courts’ in reference to all courts other than the HC in Uttar Pradesh.
Ashish Garg, registrar general of the HC, issued the notification on January 17 informing the public of the court’s decision on January 11, 2023. It is worth mentioning that as a practice in HCs, the district judiciary was termed as the subordinate judiciary and trial courts were referred to as subordinate courts.
The Allahabad HC is the country’s third high court to issue such a resolution. Earlier, HCs of Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh had issued such a decision. To recall, in November last year, while speaking at a felicitation function organised by the Supreme Court Bar Association, Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud spoke about the need to change the sense of “subordination” among district judges. He added that the judges of higher courts should change their mindset in seeing the district judiciary as “subordinate” judiciary. He added that we have fostered a culture of subordination. We call our district judiciary a subordinate judiciary. “I make a conscious effort not to call district judges subordinate judges because they are not subordinates. They belong to the district judiciary,” the CJI said.