Justice CR Pal (left) with Rourkela Bar Association president Ramesh Chandra Balla in Cuttack on Thursday. Picture by Badrika Nath Das

Cuttack, Sept. 26: The Rourkela Bar Association today argued in favour of having an Orissa High Court bench for western Odisha in Rourkela before the Justice C.R. Pal Commission.

Association president Ramesh Chandra Balla said: “We demand that the 10 districts which come under Western Odisha Development Council be considered as a zone to set up the bench in that area and Rourkela be chosen for it as it is well connected by road and rail.”

The Rourkela Municipality area and the industrial township of Rourkela Steel Plant taken together have a population of around seven lakh, next to Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.

Balla said Rourkela was the only town, which had rail connectivity with the headquarters of all the council districts. People residing in far-flung areas of the council districts face difficulties to file cases in the high court in Cuttack and follow up them. Due to poverty they often cannot meet the expenditure required to come to Cuttack.

Rourkela surrounded by large tribal population is 500km via Sambalpur and 350km via Pallahada from Cuttack. It is 200km from Keonjhar. A high court bench in Rourkela can also cater to the people of Keonjhar, Balla said, while submitting an affidavit and particulars in support of the demand.

Largest among the council districts, Sundargarh has a population of around 20.93 lakh, of which 1.91 lakh belong to scheduled caste and 10.62 lakh to scheduled tribe. The other nine council districts include Jharsuguda Sambalpur, Deogarh, Bargarh, Balangir, Sonepur, Boudh, Nuapada and Kalahandi.

On September 21, while deposing before the commission, Rourkela Shramik Sangh general secretary Mahipal Bag had demanded a permanent high court bench at any place in western Odisha, preferably in Sundargarh, Jharsuguda, Sambalpur or Bargarh.

On August 20, lawyers had launched a movement spearheaded by the central action committee of the All Western Odisha Bar Association for a permanent bench in the region. The committee had intensified its agitation with a 12-hour dawn-to-dusk strike in the region on September 19.

However, the Rourkela Bar Association had not joined the strike. It had launched a fresh agitation on Tuesday to press for its demand and closed all government offices.

It had decided to continue the agitation till the end of this month. A delegation of members of the association had submitted a memorandum to chief minister Naveen Patnaik yesterday.

The state government had appointed the single-member Justice C.R. Pal Commission on March 11, 2008 to make “a thorough, systematic and analytical study of the demands of the various bar associations to assess the feasibility and desirability of establishment of a permanent bench or a circuit bench”.