New Delhi: Forty new judges would be appointed to nine high courts including Karnataka, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Madras, Tripura.
The supreme court collegium will take a call on appointment of the new judges soon as the union law ministry has forwarded the recommendations from nine high courts to appoint 40 judges to it.
The supreme court has appointed 106 judges the constitutional courts this year.
However, according to law ministry data, as on September 1, there were 413 vacancies in the 24 high courts in the country while the approved strength of judges in the 24 these courts was 1,079. These high courts were functioning with an effective working strength of 666 judges.
The union law minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, said 126 judges were appointed in 2016 which is a record since 1989. “As of now, 106 judges have been appointed in 2017. By December 31, we will surpass the 126 figure,” he added. According to him on an average 82 judges were appointed annually.
As per procedure, the three-member high court collegium recommends a name to the Supreme Court collegium. The recommendation is initially sent to the Law Ministry, which attaches an IB report about the candidate’s record and forwards it to the SC collegium for a final call.
The collegium had recently said that the judiciary and not the IB, is a better judge of who should be part of the judiciary.
