Tribal woman among 4 likely to be appointed as HC judges

The Union government has processed four names for appointment as judges in the high courts of Madras, Karnataka and Manipur, people aware of the matter said on Tuesday.

The Union government has processed four names for appointment as judges in the high courts of Madras, Karnataka and Manipur, people aware of the matter said on Tuesday, potentially boosting the social diversity and representation of marginalised sections in the higher judiciary.

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Among the four recommendations that are likely to be notified by the Union law ministry soon, one is a tribal woman while two others belong to Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Classes (OBC) respectively, according to the people cited above.

The four names form part of a batch of nine recommendations made by the Supreme Court collegium earlier this year but were yet to be processed by the Centre. The oldest recommendation was pending since January; the people quoted in the first instance said.

According to data presented by the government in Lok Sabha in March, out of 575 high court judges appointed since 2018, 67 belong to the OBC category, 17 to the SC category, 9 to the ST category and 18 to minority communities.

The development follows key Supreme Court hearings before a bench led by justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul that has been monitoring the steps taken by the Centre in processing the collegium’s proposals for appointing and transferring judges in constitutional courts.

On September 26, the top court said that it would periodically take stock of the steps taken by the Centre in processing the collegium’s recommendations, expressing its anguish at delays.

That day, it flagged nine names recommended for appointment as judges in various high courts that were pending with the government for several months without any indication if they would be appointed of if the government had any objection to the proposals.

The court is seized of a contempt plea filed by Advocate Association, Bengaluru, through advocate Amit Pai, highlighting several instances of pending appointments and unexplained holdover by the government.

Hearing this matter on Monday, the justice Kaul-led bench cautioned the government that the collegium’s recommendations cannot remain in limbo. Instead of sitting on names indefinitely, the court said, the government must either notify the appointments or send the names, back citing specific objections.

“The processes delineated in the judgment of this court and the timeline laid down in it should work out by themselves. It should not require any monitoring by this court,” the bench, also comprising justice Sudhanshu Dhulia, recorded in its order while referring to the April 2021 judgment that prescribed a three-month deadline for the government to process the names.

When the bench sought to know the status of 19 recommendations for high court judges, which included nine names sent for the first time and 10 others that have been reiterated but are yet to be appointed, attorney general R Venkataramani responded that four out of nine names recommended for the first time have been cleared.

The delay at the end of the government in processing the collegium’s recommendations was viewed seriously by the top court during its proceedings in January and February too, when it took up the contempt plea. Lack of consistency in the time taken by the Centre to notify the recommendations was creating “issues of faith” between the judiciary and the executive, the apex court had said at the time.