New Parliament inauguration: How the old Parliament building saw the Supreme Court’s earliest sittings

The Chamber of Princes

In the 1919 plan for the construction of the Parliament, it was decided to have a council house, comprising a Legislative Assembly Chamber (which later became the Lok Sabha), a Council of States Chamber (which is now the Rajya Sabha) and the Chamber of Princes.

The Chamber of Princes is the Library Hall in the Old Parliament.

The Chamber of Princes, also known as Narendra Mandal, was established in 1920 by a Royal Proclamation of King Emperor George V to advocate the common interests of British India and the princely states. Before the proclamation, an annual Princes’ Conference was held there, since 1916.

Several records show that every year in February – March, the Chamber of Princes met in the designated hall in the Parliament House in traditional and military attire.

Federal court

According to George H Gadbois Jr, an American scholar, who tracked the early days of the Supreme Court closely, it was Hari Singh, Gour, a lawyer, poet and parliamentarian, who first mooted the idea of a Supreme Court for India.

At that time final appeals from Indian courts were decided by the judicial committee of the Privy Council in London. However, Gour’s proposal was met with resistance among nationalists, who felt that changes to the judiciary were not pressing concerns at that time. Even among lawyers, Gadbois’s book The Beginnings, notes that the idea was not enthusiastically welcomed because the Privy Council was widely respected.

However, the Council’s reputation was impacted in 1930, 118, summarily dismissed Bhagat Singh’s appeal against his death sentence. Constitutional scholar AG Noorani notes that this incident made Muhammad Ali Jinnah a supporter of the cause of an Indian Supreme Court.

With this, in 1937, the Federal Court of India began functioning from the Chamber of Princes.

It was 12 years later that in this building, the Supreme Court of India was inaugurated. “The inaugural proceedings were simple but impressive,” according to the official account of the Supreme Court.

They began at 9:45 AM when the judges of the Federal Court – Chief Justice, Harilal J Kania and Justices Saiyif Fazl Ali, M Patanjali Sastri, Mehr Chand Mahajan, Bijan Kumar Mukherjea and S R Das – took their seats. In attendance were the Chief Justices of the High Court of Allahabad, Bombay, Madras, Odisha, Assam, Nagpur, Punjab, Saurashtra, Patiala, and the East, Punjab states Union, Mysore, Hyderabad, Madhya Bharat and Travancore – Cochin. Present too, were the Prime Minister, other Ministers, Ambassadors, and diplomatic representatives of foreign states, a large number of senior another advocates of the court, and other distinguished visitors,” according to the records of the Supreme Court. Present, too, what the Prime Minister, other ministers, ambassadors, and diplomatic representatives of foreign states, a large number of senior and other advocates of the court, and other distinguished visitors,” the Supreme Court notes.

The present Court

After its inauguration on January 28, 1950, the Supreme Court commenced its sittings in a part of the Parliament House. The Court moved into the present building on Tilak Marg in 1958.

The building is shaped to project the image of scales of justice.