Govt notifies 16 new judges, additional judges in high courts

Additional judges Harinath Nunepally, Kiranmayee Mandava, Sumathi Jagadam and Nyapathy Vijay were appointed judges of the Andhra Pradesh high court, while additional judges Partha Sarathi Sen and Apurba Sinha Ray were named judges of the Calcutta High Court.

Vimal Kumar Yadav was appointed judge to the Delhi high court, Ravindra Kumar Agrawal to Chhattisgarh, and Gurusiddaiah Basavaraja to Karnataka.

Biswaroop Chowdhury, Prasenjit Biswas, Uday Kumar, Ajay Kumar Gupta, Supratim Bhattacharya, Partha Sarathi Chatterjee, and Md. Shabbar Rashidi were named additional judges of the Calcutta high court for a one-year term.

The government’s appointment of judges assumes importance as there were 345 vacancies of judges across the country’s high courts as of June 2024, according to data from the department of justice. This indicates that roughly one-third of high court judges’ positions were vacant.

Delays in appointments have forced appointees to step down from their positions, despite receiving a nod from the collegium. For instance, on 5 July, intellectual property rights lawyer Shwetasree Majumder withdrew her consent for judgeship after the government did not appoint her as a judge of the Delhi high court after the collegium recommended her in August 2024, reported LiveLaw, a legal news service.

As per routine procedure, high courts should make recommendations to fill a position at least six months before the vacancy is created. “However, this time limit is rarely observed,” law and justice minister Arjun Ram Meghwal had said in Rajya Sabha in December.

Collegium recommendations

In May this year, then chief justice of India Sanjiv Khanna disclosed data on the Supreme Court portal related to the appointments recommended by the collegium during his tenure and that of his predecessor, Dhananjaya Chandrachud.

The data disclosed by the court on 5 May showed its collegium had suggested 221 names for high court judges. Of these, eight belonged to scheduled castes and just seven to scheduled tribes. Other backward castes fared better with about 14.5%, or 32 nominees, while women came in at 15.3%, or 34 nominees, according to the data.

The apex court’s collegium has, on multiple occasions, nominated candidates belonging to minorities or marginalized communities to the higher judiciary. In July 2024, the collegium had elevated Justice N. Kotiswar Singh, who belongs to Manipur, to the Supreme Court, saying his elevation to the top court would provide representation to India’s north-eastern region.

Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai, who belongs to a scheduled caste, was also elevated to the Supreme Court in 2019.