Dungkhag Courts of Bhutan

The Dungkhag Courts (རྫོང་ཁག་ཆུང་གི་ཁྲིམས་ར་) are the lowest tier of Bhutan's four-level formal judiciary. They function as sub-district trial courts of first instance in selected dungkhags, the administrative sub-divisions that sit between the twenty dzongkhags (districts) and the gewogs (village blocks). Where a dungkhag court exists, it exercises original jurisdiction over civil, criminal and land matters arising within its territorial boundary that do not fall to the High Court or the Dzongkhag Court. Where none exists, the Dzongkhag Court itself serves as the court of first instance for the entire district.

Dungkhag courts are presided over by a single judge, known as a Dungkhag Drangpon, and are the point at which most rural Bhutanese litigants first encounter the formal legal system. The Judiciary of Bhutan recorded fifteen dungkhag courts in operation in its 2024 annual report, handling slightly over two thousand cases that year.^[1]

Place in the judicial hierarchy

Bhutan's formal judiciary, established in its modern form under the Constitution of 2008 and the Judicial Service Act of 2007, is a four-tier system. At the apex sits the Supreme Court of Bhutan, which was constituted in 2010 and serves as the court of final appeal and guardian of the Constitution. Below it is the High Court, which has existed since 1968 and was reconstituted under the 2007 Act. The third tier comprises the twenty Dzongkhag Courts, one for each district, which are courts of first instance for the bulk of the country's litigation. The Dungkhag Courts form the fourth and lowest tier.^[2]

Article 21 of the Constitution vests the judicial authority of the Kingdom in the Royal Courts of Justice and tasks them with safeguarding, upholding and administering justice fairly and independently. The Office of the Attorney General is the public prosecutor, and the Judicial Service Council (renamed the Royal Judicial Service Council under the 2007 Act) handles appointments, discipline and promotion within the judicial service.^[3]

Origins and legal basis

The dungkhag courts, in their current form, are usually traced to 1978, when the lowest rung of the formal court system was organised under the sub-district administration.^[4] Before that date, sub-district dispute resolution in Bhutan was largely the responsibility of the Dungpa, the civil administrator of a dungkhag, who exercised magisterial powers over minor matters alongside the dzongdag (district governor). Even earlier, most disputes were settled informally by village elders, monastic authorities or the local dzong, following customary norms codified in the Thrimzhung Chenmo, the Supreme Law promulgated in 1959 under the third king.

The Judicial Service Act of Bhutan 2007 placed the dungkhag courts on a statutory footing as a distinct level of the judiciary, separated administrative and judicial functions at the sub-district level, and specified qualifications for their judges. The Civil and Criminal Procedure Code of Bhutan 2001 provides the procedural framework that all courts, including dungkhag courts, must follow, covering pleadings, evidence, trial stages, judgments and appeals. Substantive law is drawn chiefly from the Penal Code of Bhutan 2004 and from specialised statutes enacted by the National Assembly.

Jurisdiction

A Dungkhag Court has original jurisdiction in all cases where the venue lies within its territorial jurisdiction and where the original jurisdiction of the High Court or the Dzongkhag Court does not apply. In practice this covers minor civil disputes, petty and middle-range criminal offences, small land and tenancy claims, family disputes below the monetary and gravity thresholds of the dzongkhag courts, and routine property and nuisance matters arising in the dungkhag's villages.^[5]

Matters reserved for higher courts include serious criminal offences (felonies, violent crime, offences against the state and organised crime), higher-value commercial and land disputes, constitutional questions, judicial review of administrative action and any dispute to which the Royal Government of Bhutan is a party. These go directly to the Dzongkhag Court or, where jurisdiction is original to the High Court, to Thimphu.

Appeals from a dungkhag court go to the Dzongkhag Court of the dzongkhag in which the dungkhag lies. A further appeal may then be taken to the High Court and, on a question of law of public importance or constitutional interpretation, to the Supreme Court. The right of appeal is provided for under the Civil and Criminal Procedure Code and the Judicial Service Act.

Judges and staffing

A dungkhag court is normally a single-judge bench. The presiding judge is a Dungkhag Drangpon, appointed by the Chief Justice of Bhutan on the recommendation of the Royal Judicial Service Council. Under the 2007 Act, candidates must hold a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree and a Post Graduate Diploma in National Law from the Bhutan National Legal Institute, which is the country's judicial training body. Candidates must additionally have served as a court Registrar for four or more consecutive years, or as a practising jabmi (advocate) for seven or more consecutive years.^[6]

Dungkhag drangpons are supported by a bench clerk and, in busier courts, by a Registrar and administrative staff. A Dungkhag Drangpon sits on the Royal Judicial Service Council on a rotational basis, giving the lowest tier of the judiciary a formal voice in service matters. Judges of the dungkhag courts serve until the mandatory retirement age set by the Judicial Service Act; assistant judges and bench clerks retire earlier.

Unlike Supreme Court and High Court justices, whose appointments are made by the Druk Gyalpo under Article 21 of the Constitution, dungkhag and dzongkhag drangpons are appointed through the Royal Judicial Service Council and the Chief Justice without direct royal warrant. This reflects a deliberate administrative separation between the higher judiciary and the service ranks that staff the trial courts.

Current dungkhag courts

According to the Judiciary of Bhutan's 2024 annual report, there are fifteen dungkhag courts in operation. Phuentsholing, the country's main commercial border town, is the only dungkhag with two benches (Bench I and Bench II), reflecting its case volume. Other dungkhag courts include Gelephu (Sarpang), Samdrup Choling and Jomotshangkha (Samdrup Jongkhar), Nganglam (Pemagatshel), Panbang (Zhemgang), Wamrong, Thrimshing and Sakteng (Trashigang), Dagapela and Lhamoidzingkha (Dagana), Dorokha and Tashichhoeling (Samtse) and the Phuentsholing bench complex (Chhukha).^[7]

The map of dungkhag courts does not exactly track the map of dungkhag administrations. Some dungkhags with small populations or proximity to the dzongkhag headquarters have no dedicated court and are served directly from the Dzongkhag Court. Thimphu's Lingzhi dungkhag, for example, has no court of its own, and matters from the high-altitude gewogs are handled at the Thimphu Dzongkhag Court. The status of the Gelephu Dungkhag Court under the reorganisation triggered by the Gelephu Mindfulness City special administrative region has not been formally addressed as of 2026; Gelephu dungkhag remains one of the busiest dungkhag courts in the country.

Procedure and language

Proceedings in a dungkhag court are conducted in Dzongkha, with translation provided in Nepali, Tshangla or English for parties who do not speak Dzongkhag. Trials follow the inquisitorial-adversarial hybrid set out in the Civil and Criminal Procedure Code 2001: the drangpon takes an active role in examining witnesses and eliciting facts, but the parties retain the right to present evidence and call witnesses of their own.

Litigants may represent themselves, and self-representation is common in rural dungkhags where the professional bar is thin. Parties may also engage a jabmi, the Bhutanese term for a licensed legal practitioner. The number of jabmis has grown steadily since the Jabmi Act of 2003 regulated the profession, but lawyer density remains low outside Thimphu, Phuentsholing and Paro, and most dungkhag court litigants still appear in person.

Court fees are modest and are set under rules issued by the Supreme Court. Judgments are delivered in writing and must set out the facts, the applicable law and the reasoning. Dungkhag court judgments are not reported in the same systematic way as those of the higher courts but are archived locally and are available on the judiciary's case management system to authorised users.

Caseload and performance

The Judiciary of Bhutan's 2024 annual report provides the most detailed public picture of the dungkhag courts' workload. The fifteen courts together received 2,078 cases during the year, resolved 1,703 of them and ended the year with 375 cases pending. Ninety-four of the pending cases had been on the docket for more than twelve months. The overall disposal rate was 82 per cent, lower than the Dzongkhag Courts' 90 per cent but still above the disposal rates reported in many South Asian trial courts.^[1]

Three courts accounted for the bulk of the dungkhag court caseload. Phuentsholing Bench II received 552 cases (26.5 per cent of the national dungkhag court total), resolved 403 and carried 149 into 2025. Gelephu received 440 cases (21.2 per cent), resolved 377 and carried 63 forward. Phuentsholing Bench I received 384 cases (18.4 per cent), resolved 295 and had 89 pending. The concentration in Phuentsholing and Gelephu reflects their status as border towns with substantial cross-border commerce, vehicular traffic, labour disputes and property turnover — the very matters that generate the minor civil and criminal cases assigned to the dungkhag tier.

Appeals from dungkhag courts to dzongkhag courts totalled 77 cases in 2024, a rate of 4.52 per cent. The judiciary has cited the low appeal rate as evidence of the quality of dungkhag court judgments; critics note that low appeal rates can equally reflect the cost, distance and inconvenience of pursuing an appeal, especially for rural litigants who would need to travel to the dzongkhag headquarters. Independent research on appeal behaviour in Bhutan's lower courts is limited.

Significance and limitations

The dungkhag courts are the main point of contact between the formal judiciary and the village-level population in the dzongkhags where they exist. By placing a trial court in a sub-district headquarters, the system reduces the distance that a rural litigant must travel to file a case, attend hearings or enforce a judgment — a material consideration in Bhutan's mountainous geography, where a trip to the dzongkhag headquarters can take a full day each way on winding roads.

At the same time, the reach of the dungkhag courts is bounded. Only six dzongkhags have dungkhag courts at all, and much of the country's territory, including all of Bumthang, Trongsa, Punakha, Wangdue Phodrang, Haa, Paro, Lhuentse, Mongar, Trashi Yangtse, Tsirang, Gasa and Thimphu's western gewogs, is served directly by the dzongkhag court. The informal dispute-resolution system — village elders, gewog-level tshogpas, religious figures and, in some Lhotshampa communities, samajs — continues to handle a large share of everyday disputes that never reach any court at all.

Observers of the Bhutanese judiciary have noted recurring constraints on the lower tier: small cohorts of trained drangpons, modest court infrastructure (some dungkhag courts share premises with the dungkhag administration office), uneven access to interpreters for non-Dzongkha-speakers, and limited legal literacy among self-represented litigants. The Supreme Court has identified case backlog reduction, digitisation and the expansion of the Bench Book guidance series as priorities for the lower courts, and the Judiciary of Bhutan's e-Litigation and Case Management System has been rolled out progressively to dungkhag courts since the late 2010s.

Reform and the wider debate

Bhutan's formal court system is young by international comparison — the Supreme Court is less than two decades old — and the dungkhag courts have evolved alongside the wider professionalisation of the judiciary. The Bhutan National Legal Institute, established in 2012, now trains all entrants to the judicial service and provides continuing education for sitting drangpons. The Jabmi (Amendment) Act tightened the requirements for legal practice, and the Alternative Dispute Resolution Act 2013 formalised mediation as a parallel track that dungkhag courts may refer suitable civil matters to.

Debate over the dungkhag courts is largely technical rather than political. Where disagreement exists, it concerns whether additional dungkhag courts should be opened in dzongkhags that currently lack them, whether single-bench courts in remote dungkhags are efficient uses of scarce judicial personnel, and whether simpler village-level tribunals might better serve the most minor disputes. Unlike the higher judiciary, the dungkhag courts rarely appear in political controversy — their docket is dominated by traffic infractions, debt collection, petty theft, small land boundary disputes and family maintenance claims, matters that draw little press attention in a country whose media landscape is already constrained by self-censorship and a small press corps.