Clear recommendations of collegium ‘expeditiously’: SC
Passing an order in a suo motu proceeding on ‘Policy Strategy for Bail’, the court was considering a set of suggestions required to expedite the hearing of criminal appeals in high courts
The Supreme Court on Thursday told the Centre to “expeditiously” clear the recommendations of the Collegium for appointment of high court judges, referring to the chart that was made public on its website early this week, as it flagged the huge pendency of over 700,000 criminal appeals across all high courts that required sanctioned posts of judges to be filled up on an urgent basis.
Passing an order in a suo motu proceeding on “Policy Strategy for Bail” the court was considering a set of suggestions required to expedite the hearing of criminal appeals in high courts.
Based on information provided by the high courts, the data of pending criminal appeals was pegged at 724,192, even though the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) shows this figure to be much higher at 761,432.
Among the high courts with critical levels of pendency, Allahabad tops the chart with 272,000 pending criminal appeals, followed by Madhya Pradesh with over 100,000 such appeals to be heard as of March.
At the same time, the apex court noted that the judicial strength in some of the high courts was significantly lower as Allahabad high court with 160 sanctioned posts had a working strength of 79 judges, Bombay high court has 66 judges out of 94 posts, Calcutta high court has 44 out of the sanctioned 72, and Delhi high court has just 41 despite 60 earmarked posts of judges.
“Few days back, this court released data of the Supreme Court collegium recommendations for appointing judges of the high courts...This is the aspect where Centre needs to act and ensure recommendations of Collegium are cleared expeditiously,” the top court said.
It referred to the details shared publicly on its website with recommendations pending clearance since November 2022. Of them, the bench noted that five proposals from 2023 are pending with the government, 12 proposals from 2024, and another 12 from the current year.
“We want to flag one issue that we are not aware how many recommendations made by SC Collegium prior to this period are pending with the government...We are also not aware of pendency of proposals where Supreme Court Collegium has reiterated the proposals after they were returned,” the order said.
Underlining the link between pendency of cases and judicial manpower, the bench said, “Not only huge number of criminal appeals are pending, there are other categories of litigations which are pending before the high courts. We hope and trust the pending proposals (by the Collegium) are cleared by the Centre at the earliest.”
Senior advocates Liz Mathew and Gaurav Agarwal assisted the court as amici curiae (friends of court) in preparing the report.
“This gap (of judicial vacancies) exacerbates delays in case disposal, as fewer judges are available to manage a growing caseload,” the report said.
Accepting the suggestion by the amici curiae to have hearing of principal bench matters at regional benches, the court said, “We accept the suggestion in case of high courts with multiple benches. The high court on administrative side should examine possibility of appeal hearing through videoconferencing so that if principal seat has more pendency, then through other benches, disposal can be improved.”
Other suggestions that got the court’s nod included dedicated benches in high courts with criminal appeal roster; prioritising hearing of appeals based on age-wise pendency, severity of offence, terminally ill or advanced age convicts; and digitisation of trial court records.
