The Karnataka High Court is the High Court of the Indian state of Karnataka.
History :- It is located in Bengaluru, the capital city of Karnataka. It was previously called as the High Court of Mysore. The High Court functions out of a red brick building known as Attara Kacheri. It is in front of Vidhana Soudha, which is the seat of the legislature of Karnataka.The Karnataka High Court is currently functional in Bengaluru, Hubli-Dharwad and Gulbarga.
The High Court is located in a building called as Attara Kacheri (meaning Eighteen offices). It is a two-storied building of stone and brick, painted red, in the Graeco-Roman style of architecture – a structure of vast expanse with Ionic porticoes at the center and at the two ends of the elevation. The construction of the building was supervised by Rao Bahadur Arcot Narayanaswami Mudaliar and completed in the year 1868. It was earlier named as Old Public Offices and got its name of Attara Kacheri when the eighteen departments in the general and revenue secretariat of the Mysore Government were shifted here from their crowded premises in Tipu Sultan’s summer palace. Tipu’s Palace was only a temporary house for the offices.
When Bowring took over as Commissioner after Cubbon, he found the building unsuitable, both because of its state of maintenance as well as its limited accommodation which no longer sufficed for the much increased work of administering the State. It was he who conceived and prepared the plans for a full-fledged secretariat building in the city area. The construction was taken up in 1864 and completed at a cost of Rs. 4.5 lakhs in 1868. There was a proposal to demolish this building in the year 1982. However, a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed in order to save this old building from getting demolished. This was the first PIL to be filed in the Karnataka High court and the case was heard in the very building that was supposed to be demolished. In August 1984, the judges M. N. Venkatachaliah and Vittal Rao pronounced a judgement that stayed the demolition.
List of former Chief Justices
- High Court of Mysore
| Chief Justice | Term |
|---|---|
| Charles George Plumer | 1884 – July 1890 |
| Sir T. R. A. Thumboo Chetty | July 1890 – 4 November 1895 |
| James William Best | 4 November 1895–1907 |
| Stanley Ismay | 1908–1912 |
| P. Mahadevayya | 1931–1934 |
High Court of Karnataka
| Chief Justice | Term | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | R.Venkataramaiah | 1 November 1956 – 16 July 1957 |
| 2 | S. R. Das Gupta | 25 July 1957 – 13 August 1961 |
| 3 | Nittoor Srinivasa Rau | 29 March 1962 – 7 August 1963 |
| – | H. Hombe Gowda (acting) | 20 January 1964 – 1 August 1969 |
| – | A. R. Somanath Iyer (acting) | 1 August 1969 – 30 August 1969 |
| – | M. Sadasivayya (acting) | 31 August 1969 – 23 October 1969 |
| – | A. R. Somanath Iyer (acting) | 24 October 1969 – 22 November 1969 |
| 4 | A. R. Somanath Iyer | 23 November 1969 – 29 December 1969 |
| 5 | M. Sadasivayya | 30 December 1969 – 16 September 1970 |
| 6 | A. Narayana Pai | 17 September 1970 – 6 June 1973 |
| 7 | G. K. Govinda Bhat | 7 June 1973 – 14 December 1977 |
| 8 | D. M. Chandrashekar | 22 March 1978 – 25 September 1982 |
| – | K. Bhimaiah (acting) | 26 September 1982 – 27 October 1982 |
| 9 | K. Bhimaiah | 28 October 1982 – 10 April 1983 |
| 10 | V. S. Malimath | 6 February 1984 – 24 October 1985 |
| – | Kalmanje Jagannatha Shetty (acting) | 24 October 1985 – 27 August 1986 |
| 11 | Prem Chand Jain | 28 August 1986 – 16 September 1989 |
| 12 | S. Mohan | 26 October 1989 – 7 October 1991 |
| 13 | S. P. Bharucha | 1 January 1991 – 30 June 1992 |
| 14 | S. B. Majumdar | 2 July 1993 – 13 September 1994 |
| 15 | G. T. Nanavati | 28 September 1994 – 4 March 1995 |
| 16 | M. L. Pendse | 28 July 1995 – 25 March 1996 |
| 17 | S. A. Hakeem | 3 May 1996 – 9 May 1996 |
| 18 | R. P. Sethi | 29 June 1996 – 6 January 1999 |
| – | Y. Bhaskar Rao (acting) | 17 January 1999 – 8 March 1999 |
| 19 | Y. Bhaskar Rao | 9 March 1999 – 26 June 2000 |
| – | Ashok Bhan (acting) | 27 June 2000 – 20 October 2000 |
| 20 | P. V. Reddi | 21 October 2000 – 16 August 2001 |
| 21 | Nagendra Kumar Jain | 31 August 2001 – 20 October 2004 |
| 22 | N. K. Sodhi | 19 November 2004 – 29 November 2005 |
| 23 | Cyriac Joseph | 7 January 2006 – 6 July 2008 |
| 24 | P. D. Dinakaran | 8 August 2008 – 7 August 2010 |
| 25 | Jagdish Singh Khehar | 8 August 2010 – 12 September 2011 |
| 26 | Vikramajit Sen | 24 December 2011 – 23 December 2012 |
| – | K Shridhar Rao (acting) | 24 December 2012 – March 2013 |
| 27 | Dhirendra Hiralal Waghela | March 2013 – 31 May 2015 |
| 28 | Subhro Kamal Mukherjee | 1 June 2015 – 9 October 2017 |
| – | H. G. Ramesh (acting) | 10 October 2017 – 11 February 2018 |
| 30 | Dinesh Maheshwari | 12 February 2018 – 17 January 2019 |
| – | Lingappa Narayana Swamy (acting) | 18 January 2019 – 9 May 2019 |
| 31 | Abhay Shreeniwas Oka | 10 May 2019 – Incumbent |