Supreme Court gets 2 more judges, to work at full strength

The two new judges will be administered the oath of office on February 13 by the CJI, a circular issued by the top court administration stated on Friday evening.

The Union government on Friday notified the appointment of two more judges to the Supreme Court, less than a week after clearing five names for the top court . With the latest orders of appointment, the Supreme Court will have its full working strength of 34 judges for the first time since May 2022 when the top court had the full working strength only for less than a week. Earlier, the court worked with all the judges in 2019. On Friday , Union law minister Kiren Rijiju announced the elevation of Allahabad high court chief justice Rajesh Bindal and Gujarat high court chief justice Aravind Kumar, whose names were recommended by the collegium on January 31.

The collegium for selection of Supreme Court judges is headed by Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, and comprises justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, KM Joseph, MR Shah, Ajay Rastogi and Sanjiv Khanna. (ANI)

The two new judges will be administered the oath of office on February 13 by the CJI, a circular issued by the top court administration stated on Friday evening.

The collegium for selection of Supreme Court judges is headed by Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, and comprises justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, KM Joseph, MR Shah, Ajay Rastogi and Sanjiv Khanna. While all the collegium members were unanimous on justice Bindal, justice Joseph expressed his reservations over justice Aravind Kumar’s name on the grounds that his name could be considered at a later stage, according to the resolution released by the top court.

The other five judges, justices Pankaj Mithal (Rajasthan high court chief justice), Sanjay Karol (Patna high court chief justice), PV Sanjay Kumar (Manipur high court chief justice), Ahsanuddin Amanullah (Patna high court judge), and Manoj Misra (Allahabad high court judge), were appointed to the Supreme Court on February 4, and sworn in on February 6.

While the names of the above mentioned five judges were cleared by the Centre after sitting over their recommendations for almost two months, the latest orders of appointments have come in 10 days.

The appointment of five judges on February 4 came a day after a nudge from a top court bench, headed by justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, observing that unexplained delay in clearing names recommended by the collegium was creating “issues of faith” between the judiciary and the executive.

As first reported by HT on the morning of February 4, the names were cleared on February 3, hours after attorney general (AG) R Venkataramani gave an assurance to the Justice Kaul-led bench justice that the five appointments would come “very soon”, even as he added that it would not be proper to put down the timeline in the judicial order.

The bench, during the February 3 hearing of a contempt plea against the government over the delays in appointing judges, acknowledged the AG’s remarks, but added: “Sometimes you clear cases overnight and sometime you take months. This is what is creating the issue of faith...when we ask you questions, you will tell us -- it is happening; it will happen; it will happen soon...but when? We are posing this question to you since there is a history. Things have not been happening for years together.”

On February 3, the court also took strong exception to the government sitting over almost a dozen recommendations pertaining to the transfer of high court judges and appointment of a chief justice, making it clear that “any delay in transfers may result in administrative and judicial actions which may not be palatable”.

Following the February 3 hearing, the Centre has cleared the appointment of 13 judges for various high courts, apart from seven judges for the top court.

On February 2, Union law minister Kiren Rijiju told Parliament that no timeline can be set down for filling up of vacancies of the judges in the constitutional courts, flagging that several high courts across the country are in breach of the six-month deadline for making recommendations for anticipated vacancies.

On Thursday, Rijiju informed the Rajya Sabha that there is no proposal to bring a new law on judicial appointments, even as he pressed for the necessity to have a search-cum-evaluation committee (SEC) for bringing in more transparency and objectivity in the process of judicial appointment through the collegium system.

Responding to a question raised by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Sushil Kumar Modi, Rijiju said that the government wrote to the CJI on January 6, proposing to set up SEC to shortlist names eligible for judgeship but “a response from the Supreme Court is awaited.”

“The said committee will be entrusted to prepare a panel of eligible candidates from which the respective collegiums will make recommendations,” the minister informed the House, pointing to a similar suggestion made by the government in its earlier communications in 2017 and 2021 too, “but the Supreme Court did not agree to set up such committees.”

Over the last few months, Rijiju has repeatedly said that the Constitution did not envisage a collegium system of judges appointing judges and that Supreme Court judges spend too much time in the selection process.

Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, too, weighed in questioning the top court for striking down the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act (NJAC) which sought to give the government a greater role in judicial appointments.

In its response, the Supreme Court in December advised government functionaries to “exercise control”, and stressed that the Union government is bound to follow the collegium system “to a T” because that is the law of the land.