'Tower of Justice' misses another HC deadline

The Public Works Department has missed another Punjab and Haryana High Court deadline to complete Gurugram’s long-delayed Tower of Justice, extending a court-monitored project that has remained unfinished for years.

The latest miss marks a second court-set target that the project has failed to meet. The Tower of Justice is part of the Gurugram district court complex, where the prolonged construction has kept a major judicial infrastructure upgrade in limbo.

Another missed deadline

Times of India reported on June 20 and 21 that the High Court’s most recent deadline, June 19, passed without completion of the building. The report said substantial work was still unfinished, despite the court’s push for the project to be wrapped up.

That followed an earlier deadline set by the court for May 15. In reporting published on May 1, Times of India said the project, launched in 2017, was still incomplete nine years later and that the High Court had ordered it completed by mid-May.

The repeated missed targets leave the project under continued judicial scrutiny and reinforce how far it has slipped from its original schedule.

A project delayed for years

The Tower of Justice was launched in 2017 with an original three-year completion plan, but the building has remained unfinished well past that timeline. The delay has turned the project into a symbol of the strain on public judicial infrastructure in Gurugram, one of Haryana’s busiest court campuses.

The long timeline has also meant that the district court complex has continued operating without the full space and facilities the project was meant to provide. That has kept the project visible not just as a construction delay, but as a practical operational issue for the court system.

Fire added urgency

Pressure on the complex increased after a fire in the district court record room on May 26 forced hearings to move temporarily to the PWD guesthouse. The disruption highlighted the limits of the existing facilities and intensified attention on the unfinished Tower of Justice.

A follow-up report on May 27 said the PWD had sped up work after the fire. The sequence of events suggested that the court fire did not create the underlying delay, but it did sharpen the consequences of leaving the project unfinished.

For court staff and litigants, the delay has had direct operational effects, from uncertainty over hearing venues to continued dependence on temporary arrangements while the main complex remains incomplete.

What happens next

The key open question is whether the PWD or the court will now set a fresh completion date, seek more time or file an explanation for the missed deadline. The reporting so far does not indicate a new revised target.

It also remains unclear how much of the project is still unfinished and whether hearings will stay in temporary quarters or move back into the main complex once the work advances.

For now, the Tower of Justice remains a long-delayed court infrastructure project that has missed another High Court deadline after years of slippage.