Uttarakhand High Court

The Uttarakhand High Court, formally the High Court of Uttarakhand, sits at Nainital and is the high court of the Indian state of Uttarakhand. The Uttar Pradesh Reorganization Act, 2000 carved the state out of Uttar Pradesh on 9 November 2000, and Part IV of that Act provided for the establishment of the High Court, which became the 18th High Court in India. Its first Chief Justice, Ashok A. Desai, was transferred from the Allahabad High Court. The court occupies an earthquake-resistant Gothic-style building constructed in 1900 as the old Secretariat, to which a Chief Justice court block and a lawyers chambers block were added in 2007. Its sanctioned strength began at seven judges and has risen to eleven. Two of its Chief Justices, S. H. Kapadia and J. S. Khehar, later became Chief Justices of India, and in March 2017 the court held that the rivers Ganges and Yamuna are living entities.