About Us

The District Court Complex in Vanchiyoor was established in the year 1950. The present red stone structure which was the only building in the compound was put up by H.H. Sree Moolam Thirunal Maharaja, the then ruler of Travancore for the purpose of housing a high school which came to be named after the Ruler as S.M.V. High School. It was functioning as such till 1942 when the school was shifted to its present site on the side of the M.G.Road near the Pazhavangadi Overbridge. In the very same year, the Courts were shifted to the present premises. Till 1942 the High Court was functioning in a portion of the Secretariat building and, the District Court and other Courts were functioning in the compound where the present Ayurveda College is situated.

While the Courts were functioning as such, the integration of the two princely states of Travancore and Cochin took place on 1st of July 1949, as a result of which the High Court and the Law College were shifted to Ernakulam. As a necessary consequence of the shifting of the Courts, the majority of the senior advocates also shifted their practice to Ernakulam. It was in the year 1954 that a Bench of the Travancore Cochin High Court was established in Trivandrum with filing powers. The Bench was functioning till 1.11.1956, the date on which Kerala became a Part-A State. By the formation of the Kerala State, the then Chief Justice discontinued the Bench by transferring all the pending cases to Ernakulam, inspite of great protest from the members of the Bar as well as the public. The present Kanyakumari District which was a part of Trivandrum District became part of the Tamil Nadu State on 1.11.1956 as a consequence of the linguistic division of the State in India. The result was that the entire cases which arose from the Kanyakumari District where transferred to the Madras High Court and many of the members of the Trivandrum Bar were also shifted their practice to Madras. It includes many of the legal luminaries of the Trivandrum Bar, Sri. S. EaswaraIyer, Sri. P. Subramoniam Potty (who later became a Judge of the Kerala High Court and Chief Justice of Gujarat) and others and the Trivandrum Bar was left with a few advocates.

The Association was not doing any extra activities except the conduct of the Annual Law Dinner on the eve of the mid summer holidays. The Association was allowed to occupy two rooms in the main Court building of which one was being used as the Library. This was a state of affairs. After years, things had changed a lot. The number of members increased abnormally and the activities of the association spread to other socio legal field