The Rajasthan High Court has constituted 25 benches — including four larger benches, six division benches, and fifteen single benches — to ensure uninterrupted judicial proceedings on Friday, 1 August, as all 39 judges from both the Principal Seat at Jodhpur and the Jaipur Bench converge on Jaipur for a three-day international conference. Cases from the Jodhpur seat will be heard via video conferencing, marking one of the court's more unusual administrative arrangements in recent memory.

How the Benches Are Organised

For matters originating from the Jodhpur Principal Seat, the court has assigned one larger bench, three division benches, and four single benches — all conducting proceedings through video conferencing. The Jaipur Bench docket, meanwhile, will be handled by three larger benches, three division benches, and eleven single benches sitting in person. The structure is designed to maintain the court's full case-flow despite the geographic consolidation of its entire judiciary in one city.

The Conference Drawing All Judges to Jaipur

The trigger for this administrative reconfiguration is an international conference on peace, mediation, and the rule of law, commencing Friday evening and running for three days. Hosted by the Rajasthan State Legal Services Authority, the event is expected to bring together judges, senior advocates, mediators, scholars, and policymakers from Commonwealth countries. The confluence of so many judicial and legal minds in Jaipur simultaneously makes the bench arrangement both a logistical necessity and a showcase of the court's administrative flexibility.

Key Legal Questions Before the Larger Benches

The larger benches are scheduled to take up several matters of substantial legal weight. Among them: whether cases involving senior citizens, women, children, and persons with disabilities should receive priority listing; petitions pending since 1989, filed by Acharya Dharmendra and others, concerning the installation of a statue of Manu within the Jaipur Bench premises; and legal questions around the eligibility of convicts serving sentences under the POCSO Act and for the rape of minors to be transferred to open prisons.

Notably, the Manu statue petitions have been pending for over three decades, making their listing before a larger bench a significant procedural development. The decisions rendered are expected to set authoritative precedents guiding adjudication of similar matters across lower courts.

Significance of the Arrangement

This special sitting underscores the Rajasthan High Court's commitment to ensuring that judicial work does not stall even during extraordinary administrative circumstances. The use of video conferencing for Jodhpur matters also reflects the court's growing reliance on technology-enabled hearings — a practice that expanded substantially during the post-pandemic period and has since been institutionalised for select proceedings. How smoothly the hybrid model functions across 25 simultaneous benches on Friday will be closely watched by court administrators.