Pune Cantonment court set to shift to Wanowrie tomorrow
Pune Cantonment court set to shift to Wanowrie tomorrow
The Pune cantonment court will shift from its present location on MG Road to a new facility in Wanowrie from June 27, 2024.
26 June 2024
Pune- The Pune cantonment court is ready to relocate from its current century-old British-era building on MG Road to a new facility at the Mahatma Phule Sanskrutik Bhavan in Wanowrie starting from June 27. The current one-storey building houses three courts for judicial magistrate first class, handling criminal cases from the Cantonment, Wanowrie, Mundhwa, and Hadapsar police limits.
The existing structure has been unfit for service for years, struggling with issues such as a leaking roof, cramped court space, and an unpleasant open area amid heavy traffic congestion in the Pune camp. A report submitted by the Pune Cantonment Board after an inspection in 2017 declared the structure ‘unsafe’. However, the court proceedings were somehow carried out in that area for seven years.
The Cantonment Court Lawyers’ Association has reported that there are at least 30,000 pending cases before the cantonment court. The Pune Bar Association (PBA) has expressed concerns that relocating the court to Wanowrie will inconvenience the general public in the future. This is because the cantonment court is one of the oldest courts in the city and the Pune Cantonment Board has not made sufficient efforts to maintain it over the years. Ideally, the court authorities, in association with the cantonment board, should have constructed a new court at the existing location.
The court needed to relocate because the current space was too small, making it difficult to store documents, according to a lawyer. Activists and citizens are urging the Pune Cantonment Board authorities to protect the court’s new location from land developers due to its high commercial value.
