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Collegium recommends 3 judges for Supreme Court
The collegium in the apex court comprises Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud and justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai and Surya Kant
The Supreme Court collegium on Monday recommended three high court chief justices for being appointed as judges in the top court. Chief justices Satish Chandra Sharma (Delhi high court), Augustine George Masih (Rajasthan high court) and Sandeep Mehta (Gauhati high court) were proposed to be elevated to the Supreme Court by the collegium after a meeting on Monday evening. Justice Masih belongs to a minority community.
The collegium in the apex court comprises Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud and justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai and Surya Kant.
Flagging that the top court, with a sanctioned strength of 34 judges, currently has a vacancy of three judges, the collegium’s resolution underlined that the deluge of filing and mounting arrears of cases make it imperative that the Supreme Court must function with its full strength of judges.
“The Supreme Court has a huge backlog of cases. In view of the ever-mounting pendency of cases, the workload of judges has increased considerably. Bearing in mind the above, it has become necessary to ensure that the Court has full working judge strength leaving no vacancy at any point in time. Bearing in mind the above, the Collegium has decided to fill up all three existing vacancies by recommending names,” stated the resolution.
According to the statistics available at the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG), the Supreme Court, as on September 14, had 64,989 registered cases (both civil and criminal) and 15,512 unregistered cases (where defects in filing petitions are yet to be rectified by lawyers). It was on the same day that the Supreme Court administration linked its case management data on pending and disposed cases on the NJDG. The move was praised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 14, calling it a step that will further transparency in judiciary and enhance the justice delivery system in the country.
The collegium resolution on Monday stated that the three high court chief justices were being recommended after carefully evaluating the merit, integrity and competence of eligible chief justices and senior puisne judges of the high courts and also accommodating a plurality of considerations.
While the parent high court of justice Sharma is Madhya Pradesh, justices Masih and Mehta are from Punjab & Haryana and Rajasthan high courts respectively. Since the high court judges retire at 62, justice Sharma will have to demit office as a judge on November 29 if the central government does not appoint him by that date. Judges in the Supreme Court retire at 65. On Tuesday, a bench led by justice Kaul is also slated to hear a contempt case against the government for delay in processing the recommendations of the collegium for appointing and transferring judges.
Addressing an event in the Capital on September 15, CJI Chandrachud had stressed on institutionalising the system of appointing judges by laying down objective parameters, as he added that the Supreme Court collegium has collected data of the top 50 judges in the country who would be considered for future appointments in the top court. One of the important effects of institutionalising courts, justice Chandrachud had added, is that it enhances transparency and accountability. The resolution on Monday highlighted the role of the Centre of Research and Planning (CRP) in readying a compilation of relevant background material to assist the collegium.
In April, CJI Chandrachud had said that there cannot be any justification for the collegium to keep even a single vacancy unfilled in the Supreme Court, as he announced involving CRP, the in-house think tank of the top court, in the process of preparing a list of probables for future appointments in the top court.
CRP, he announced, has now been tasked to assist the permanent secretariat in the top court, which deals with various aspects of judicial appointments, including collection of information, preparation of records and putting them up before the collegium.
The announcement by the CJI to involve CRP in the process of shortlisting candidates had come in April, three months after the Union government wrote to justice Chandrachud expressing the need to have a search-cum-evaluation committee (SEC) for bringing in more transparency and objectivity in the process of judicial appointments. The CJI or the collegium is yet to respond to the January 6 letter by the government.
CRP was set up in the Supreme Court in 2018 by the then CJI, Ranjan Gogoi, to strengthen the knowledge infrastructure of Supreme Court. Apart from research, CRP is mandated to focus on outreach that will include explaining key decisions of the SC as well as its contributions to law and justice, and on the working of courts.
