New Delhi: The Supreme Court Wednesday agreed to take up retired judge V.P. Patil’s petition to rename Bombay High Court as Maharashtra High Court.
A bench led by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde issued notices to the central government, the Union Ministry of Law and Justice and governments of Maharashtra and Goa, seeking their response on the petition.
Justices S.A. Bopanna and Hrishikesh Roy were also part of the bench that conducted the proceedings via video conferencing.
Through his petition, Patil asserted that the “cultural assertion of Maharashtra” will be at peril if public institutions such as the High Court are not renamed after the state.
Several states in the country have High Courts named after them, but Maharashtra has been denied the same benefit, the petition stated.
In allowing his petition, Patil said, the court will “uplift the socio, political and cultural rights of Maharashtra as guaranteed by the Constitution of India”.
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Renaming will ‘fructify’ dignity of a Maharashtrian
Patil’s lawyer, Shivaji Jadhav, invoked Article 21 of the Constitution (right to life) to argue for a name change. He stated that a citizen enjoys the right to live with dignity and the “identity” one associates with.
Jadhav added that a Maharashtrian or Maratha takes pride in associating dignity to the concept of a “Maratha,” and thus using ‘Maharashtra’ to refer to the High Court is “yet another means to fructify the dignity of a Maharashtrian”.
Patil asked the court to treat his petition as a representation from all Maharashtrians.
He said the word ‘Maharashtra’ denotes a special significance in the life of a Maharashtrian and, therefore renaming the High Court will also be an “expression of cultural and right to heritage as protected” under the Constitution.
As right to life includes the right to “autonomy,” Patil said, the change of nomenclature of a public institution should be “appreciated” as a move to protect a Maratha’s right to autonomy.
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Article 19 includes expression of identity
In his petition, Patil added that the court ought to consider the word “expression”, used under Article 19, to include the expression of identity within its ambit as well.
Article 19 states that all citizens have the right to freedom of speech and expression.
“That the protection thus is guaranteed also to cultural, social and political identity,” he argued.
“..thus expression of the word Maharashtra while referring to the High Court pertaining to the ‘state’ amounts to fundamental right of the Petitioner,” he said.
Patil also pointed out to a move taken in 2016 to rename the Bombay High Court to Mumbai High Court. The bill introduced in the Parliament, he said, lapsed due to lack of consensus.
According to him, fresh demands made to the government to re-introduce the bill have not yielded positive results.