Madras High Court

Madras High Court
Madras High Court Building
13°05′12.8″N 80°17′16.4″E / 13.086889°N 80.287889°E / 13.086889; 80.287889
Established	26 June 1862; 162 years ago (1862-06-26)
Jurisdiction	Tamil Nadu and Puducherry
Location	Principal bench Chennai Additional bench Madurai
Coordinates	13°05′12.8″N 80°17′16.4″E / 13.086889°N 80.287889°E / 13.086889; 80.287889
Motto	Satyameva Jayate
Composition method	Presidential with confirmation of Chief Justice of India and Governor of respective state
Authorised by	Constitution of India
Appeals to	Supreme Court of India
Appeals from	Subordinate Courts of Tamil Nadu
Judge term length	Mandatory retirement at age 62
Number of positions	75 (Permanent 56; Addl. 19)
Language	English, Tamil
Website	hcmadras.tn.gov.in
Chief Justice
Currently	Shriram Kalpathi Rajendran
Since	27 September 2024

The High Court of Judicature at Madras is a High Court located in Chennai, India. It has appellate jurisdiction over the state of Tamil Nadu and the union territory of Puducherry. It is one of the oldest high courts of India along with Calcutta High Court in Kolkata^[1][2][3] and Bombay High Court in Mumbai. The Madras High Court is one of four charter high courts of colonial India established in the four Presidency Towns of Madras, Bombay, Allahabad and Calcutta by letters patent granted by Queen Victoria, dated 26 June 1862. It exercises original jurisdiction over the city of Chennai, as well as extraordinary original jurisdiction, civil and criminal, under the letters patent and special original jurisdiction for the issue of writs under the Constitution of India.^[4][5] Covering 107 acres, the court complex is one of the largest in the world, second only to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The four-storey administrative building attracts hundreds of litigants every day.

The High Court consists of the Chief Justice and 74 other judges.^[5][6]

From 1817 to 1862, the Supreme Court of Madras was opposite the Chennai Beach railway station. From 1862 to 1892, the High Court was also housed there. The present buildings were officially inaugurated on 12 July 1892, when the then Madras Governor, Beilby, Baron Wenlock, handed over the key to then Chief Justice Sir Arthur Collins.^[7]

British India's three presidency towns of Madras (Chennai), Bombay (Mumbai), and Calcutta (Kolkata) were each granted a High Court by letters patent dated 26 June 1862.^[8] The letters patent were issued by Queen Victoria under the authority of the British parliament's Indian High Courts Act 1861. The three courts are unique, established under British royal charter in contrast with the other high courts, which were established under the Indian Constitution. The Constitution of India recognises the older courts.

The Madras High Court was formed by merging the Supreme Court of Judicature at Madras, and the Sadr Diwani Adalat. The Court was required to decide cases in accordance with justice, equity and good conscience. The earliest judges included Holloway, Innes, and Morgan. The first Indian to sit on the High Court was Justice T. Muthuswamy Iyer. Other early Indian judges included Justices V. Krishnaswamy Iyer and P. R. Sundaram Iyer.

The Madras High Court was a pioneer in Original Side jurisdiction reform in favor of Indian practitioners as early as the 1870s.

The history means that the decisions of the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council are still binding on it, provided that the ratio of a case has not been overruled by the Supreme Court of India.

Although the city was renamed from Madras to Chennai in 1996, the Court continued as the Madras High Court. The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly passed a unanimous resolution appealing to the Central Government to rename the court as High Court of Tamil Nadu since the Court serves the whole state.^[9]

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The High Court complex is located in the southern end of George Town. The building was constructed after relocating temples on the land. The building now used exclusively by the High Court was built to also house the Courts of Small Causes and the City Civil Court. These were subsequently shifted to other buildings on the campus.^[10]

The High Court building is an example of Indo-Saracenic architecture. Construction began in October 1888 and was completed in 1892 following the design prepared by J. W. Brassington,^[10] and later under the guidance of architect Henry Irwin,^[11] who completed it with the assistance of J. H. Stephens.

Brassington initially prepared a plan to construct a building with 11 court halls at an estimate of ₹945,000. Six were meant for the High Court, four for the Small Causes Court, and one for the City Civil Court. An additional building to house lawyers’ chambers was added to the plan, with a first floor walkway to connect it to the main building, increasing the budget to ₹1,298,163. Complementing a 125-feet-tall standalone lighthouse that was already on the site, a dioptric light was built on the 142-feet-high main tower of the building, raising the tower's height to 175 feet.^[10]

Save for the steel girders and some ornamental tiles, almost all the material for the construction was procured locally. Brick and terracotta were brought from government brickyards. Most of the construction was executed by local artisans trained at the School of Arts.^[10]

The High Court building was damaged in the shelling of Madras by SMS Emden on 22 September 1914, at the beginning of the First World War. It remains one of the few Indian buildings to have been damaged by a German attack.

The building offers several points of architectural interest. The painted ceilings and the stained glass doors are masterpieces. The old lighthouse is housed within the High Court campus but is poorly maintained and in disrepair.

The boundaries of the complex are marked by Prakasam Road (formerly Broadway) and Rajaji Road (the old North Beach Road), stretching northward from the statue of Rajaji in the northeast and the statue of T. Prakasamgaru in the southwest within the complex. The complex houses the largest number of courts in Asia.^[12]

The city civil and sessions courts, which are located inside the High Court campus, are in two blocks, namely, the main and annexe buildings. Some of the city civil courts are located at Additional City Civil Court Complex at Allikulam Commercial Complex in Park Town and M. Singaravelar Maligai in George Town. The District and Session Court for Exclusive Trial of Bomb Blast Cases is located at Karayanchavadi in the neighbourhood of Poonamallee, and the Commercial Court is located in the neighbourhood of Egmore.^[13]

The current Chief Justice of the Madras High Court is K. R. Shriram. The court houses 63 judges, including the Chief Justice. They exercise civil, criminal, writ, testamentary and admiralty jurisdiction.^[14] The Madurai Bench began functioning in 2004.

The vestiges of the colonial High Court characterise the premises. Justices of the Madras High Court are led by orderlies who bear a ceremonial mace made of silver. Most High Courts and the Supreme Court of India either never had the practice or abandoned it.^[15]

The Madras High Court is the birthplace of organised legal reporting in India. It is home to the Madras Law Journal,^[16] which was the first journal dedicated to reporting texts of judgments of the High Court. It started in 1891.

The Saturday Club met every week. It was started at the house of the Vakil Bar's senior member Sir S. Subramania Iyer in Mylapore in 1888. All leading members of the Madras Bar took part. At one meeting, it was decided to start The Madras Law Journal, which was inspired by other newly established periodicals such as Law Quarterly Review, started by Sir Frederick Pollock in England in 1885 and The Harvard Law Review established by Harvard Law School Association in 1887.

The objectives of the journal were laid out in the preface of the first issue:

In addition to giving our own reports of the decisions of the High Courts in Madras and other places, we hope to place before our readers translations of various Hindu Law Books which remain yet untranslated, insofar as they have bearing on questions which practically arise for decision every day in our Courts of Justice. We propose further from time to time, to place side by side the conflicting decisions of the various Courts in India on the same point in the hope that such procedure will enable the Courts to act in greater harmony than they do at present in the interpretation of Acts and enunciation of general principles of law and when this is not possible, to enable the Legislature to bring about such harmony by removing the ambiguities which may have given rise to such discordant views.

The Madras Law Journal is known for its quickness and reporting accuracy and its discriminating selection of cases to be reported. It occupies a premier place among Indian legal periodicals.

Madras Weekly Notes is a law journal reporting criminal judgements of the Madras High Court from 1910 to till date.

Citations are formatted as, e.g., "1929 1 MWN(Cr.) 1", where (left to right) 1929 is the year, 1 is the volume, "MWN(Cr.)" is the abbreviated journal name, and "1" is the page number.

Journals that record cases include Current Tamil Nadu Cases, Current Writ Cases, and Tamil Nadu Motor Accident Cases.

Established in 2004, the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court handles cases in the fourteen southern districts of Tamil Nadu, as the court is located in the far-northern capital. The bench is located in Madurai, and has the Kanyakumari, Tirunelveli, Thoothukudi, Tenkasi, Madurai, Dindigul, Ramanathapuram, Virudhunagar, Theni, Sivaganga, Pudukottai, Thanjavur, Tiruchirappalli and Karur districts under its jurisdiction.

The court complex has 12 court halls, and now increased upto 25 halls furnished on the model of the court halls in the Supreme Court, the Delhi and the Madras High Court.

The court, since its inauguration on 24 July 2004, has accelerated the legal process in the southern districts.^[17]

#	Chief Justice	Term
1	Sir Thomas Andrew Lumisden Strange	1801–1816
2	Sir John Henry Newbolt	1816–1820
3	Sir Edmond Stanley	1820–1825
4	Sir Ralph Palmer	1825–1835
5	Sir Robert Buckley Comyn	1835–1842
6	Sir Edward John Gambier	1842–1850
7	Sir Christopher Rawlinson	1850–1859
8	Sir Henry Davison	1859–1860
9	Sir Colley Harman Scotland	1860–1861

#	Chief Justice	Term
9	Sir Colley Harman Scotland	1861–1871
10	Sir Walter Morgan	1871–1879
11	Sir Charles Arthur Turner	1879–1885
12	Sir Arthur John Hammond Collins	1885–1898
13	Charles Arnold White	1899–1914
14	John Edward Power Wallis	1914–1921
15	Sir Walter George Salis Schwabe	1921–1924
16	Sir Murray Coutts-Trotter	1924–1929
17	Sir Horace Owen Compton Beasley	1929–1937
18	Sir Alfred Henry Lionel Leach	1937–1947
19	Sir Fredrick William Gentle	1947–1948

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S. No.	Chief Justice	Date of Appointment	Date of Retirement
20	P. V. Rajamannar	22 April 1948	9 May 1961
21	S. Ramachandra Iyer	16 September 1961	1 November 1964
22	Palagani Chandra Reddy	15 February 1965	30 June 1966
23	M. Anantanarayanan	1 July 1966	30 April 1969
24	Kuppuswami Naidu Veeraswami	1 May 1969	11 March 1976
25	Palapatti Sadaya Goundar Kailasam	8 April 1976	2 January 1977
26	Padmanbhapillay Govindan Nair	3 January 1977	28 May 1978
27	Tayi Ramaprasada Rao	29 May 1978	5 November 1979
28	Muhammad Kassim Muhammad Ismail	6 November 1979	9 July 1981
29	Ballabh Narayan Singh	12 March 1982	24 January 1984
30	Madhukar Narhar Chandurkar	2 April 1984	13 March 1988
31	Shanmughasundaram Mohan	19 October 1989	24 October 1989
32	Adarsh Sein Anand	1 November 1989	17 November 1991
33	Kanta Kumari Bhatnagar	15 June 1992	14 November 1992
34	Kudarikoti Annadanayya Swamy	1 July 1993	19 March 1997
35	Manmohan Singh Liberhan	7 July 1997	27 December 1998
36	Ashok Chhotelal Agarwal	24 May 1999	26 August 1999
37	K. G. Balakrishnan	9 September 1999	15 June 2000
38	Nagendra Kumar Jain	13 September 2000	30 August 2001
39	B. Subhashan Reddy	12 September 2001	20 November 2004
40	Markandey Katju	28 November 2004	10 October 2005
41	Ajit Prakash Shah	12 November 2005	9 May 2008
42	Asok Kumar Ganguly	19 May 2008	15 December 2008[18]
43	Hemant Laxman Gokhale	9 March 2009	28 April 2010
44	M. Y. Eqbal	11 June 2010	21 December 2012
45	Rajesh Kumar Agrawal	24 October 2013	16 February 2014
46	Sanjay Kishan Kaul	26 July 2014	16 February 2017[19]
47	Indira Banerjee	5 April 2017	6 August 2018
48	Vijaya Kamlesh Tahilramani	12 August 2018	6 September 2019
49	Amreshwar Pratap Sahi	11 November 2019	31 December 2020
50	Sanjib Banerjee	4 January 2021	16 November 2021
51	Munishwar Nath Bhandari	14 February 2022	12 September 2022
52	Sanjay V. Gangapurwala	28 May 2023	23 May 2024
53	R. Mahadevan (acting)	24 May 2024	17 July 2024
54	D. Krishnakumar (acting)	18 July 2024	26 September 2024
55	Shriram Kalpathi Rajendran	27 September 2024	Incumbent

The Madras High Court sits at Chennai and has jurisdiction over the state of Tamil Nadu. It is permitted to have a maximum of 75 judges, of which 56 may be permanently appointed and 19 may be additionally appointed. Currently, it has 66 judges.^[20]

#	Judge	Date of joining	Date of retirement
1	K. R. Shriram (CJ)	21 June 2013	27 September 2025
2	S. S. Sundar	7 April 2016	2 May 2025
3	R. Subramanian	5 October 2016	24 July 2025
4	M. Sundar	5 October 2016	18 July 2028
5	R. Suresh Kumar	5 October 2016	28 May 2026
6	J. Nisha Banu	5 October 2016	17 September 2028
7	M. S. Ramesh	5 October 2016	27 December 2025
8	S. M. Subramaniam	5 October 2016	30 May 2027
9	Dr. Anita Sumanth	5 October 2016	14 April 2032
10	P. Velmurugan	5 October 2016	8 June 2027
11	Dr. G. Jayachandran	5 October 2016	31 March 2027
12	C. V. Karthikeyan	5 October 2016	13 December 2026
13	R. M. T. Teeka Raman	16 November 2016	8 June 2025
14	N. Sathish Kumar	16 November 2016	5 May 2029
15	N. Seshasayee	16 November 2016	7 January 2025
16	V. Bhavani Subbaroyan	28 June 2017	16 May 2025
17	A. D. Jagadish Chandira	28 June 2017	14 February 2028
18	G. R. Swaminathan	28 June 2017	31 May 2030
19	Abdul Quddhose	28 June 2017	7 September 2031
20	M. Dhandapani	28 June 2017	14 April 2030
21	Pondicherry Daivasigamani Audikesavalu	28 June 2017	29 December 2032
22	Vivek Kumar Singh	22 September 2017	24 March 2030
23	R. Hemalatha	1 December 2017	30 April 2025
24	P. T. Asha	4 June 2018	21 August 2028
25	N. Nirmal Kumar	4 June 2018	22 November 2027
26	N. Anand Venkatesh	4 June 2018	3 July 2031
27	G. K. Ilanthiraiyan	4 June 2018	8 July 2032
28	Krishnan Ramasmy	4 June 2018	2 June 2030
29	C. Saravanan	4 June 2018	30 November 2033
30	B. Pugalendhi	20 November 2018	24 May 2029
31	Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy	22 February 2019	1 October 2028
32	Shamim Ahmed	12 December 2019	7 March 2028
33	Battu Devanand	13 January 2020	13 April 2028
34	A. A. Nakkiran	3 December 2020	9 May 2025
35	Veerasamy Sivagnanam	3 December 2020	31 May 2025
36	Ilangovan Ganesan	3 December 2020	4 June 2025
37	Sathi Kumar Sukumara Kurup	3 December 2020	17 July 2025
38	Murali Shankar Kuppuraju	3 December 2020	30 May 2030
39	Manjula Ramaraju Nalliah	3 December 2020	15 February 2026
40	Thamilselvi T. Valayapalayam	3 December 2020	18 June 2030
41	Sundaram Srimathy	20 October 2021	9 January 2029
42	D. Bharatha Chakravarthy	20 October 2021	23 July 2033
43	R. Vijayakumar	20 October 2021	21 December 2032
44	Mohammed Shaffiq	20 October 2021	5 March 2034
45	J. Sathya Narayana Prasad	29 October 2021	14 March 2031
46	Mummineni Sudheer Kumar	24 March 2022	19 May 2031
47	Nidumolu Mala	28 March 2022	23 April 2029
48	S. Sounthar	28 March 2022	28 July 2033
49	Sunder Mohan	6 June 2022	1 November 2031
50	Kabali Kumaresh Babu	6 June 2022	13 December 2031
51	Lekshmana Chandra Victoria Gowri	7 February 2023	20 May 2035
52	Pillaipakkam Bahukutumbi Balaji	7 February 2023	10 April 2035
53	Kandhasami Kulandaivelu Ramakrishnan	7 February 2023	26 May 2035
54	Ramachandran Kalaimathi	7 February 2023	17 April 2030
55	K. Govindarajan Thilakavadi	7 February 2023	25 April 2028

#	Judge	Date of joining
1	Venkatachari Lakshminarayanan	27 February 2023
2	Periyasamy Vadamalai	27 March 2023
3	Ramasamy Sakthivel	23 May 2023
4	P. Dhanabal	23 May 2023
5	Chinnasamy Kumarappan	23 May 2023
6	Kandasamy Rajasekar	23 May 2023
7	N. Senthilkumar	16 October 2023
8	G. Arul Murugan	16 October 2023
9	R. Poornima	24 September 2024
10	M. Jothiraman	24 September 2024
11	Augustine Devadoss	24 September 2024
	Vacant

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