The Supreme Court collegium has given its recommendations regarding the appointment of 25 judges as permanent judges across five high courts and further elevated 19 lawyers as judges across three high courts.
The collegium recommending the appointments was composed of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra along with two of the senior most judges, Justices J Chelameswar and Ranjan Gogoi.
The meeting to decide on the appointments was held on December 4.
Appointments Made In Several States
Five lawyers were appointed as judges in Karnataka High Court based on recommendation provided by its chief justice earlier. These were: Shankar Ganapathi Pandit, Dixit Krishna Shripad, Bhotanhosur Mallikarjuna Shyam Prasad, Ramakrishna Devdas and Siddappa Sunil Dutt Yadav.
The Collegium made note of the disagreement regarding lack of representation of various cross-sections of the society between the Karnataka chief minister and a few bodies of lawyers. The chief minister had asked the proposal be returned for reconsideration to the high court.
The apex court body noted that the high court collegium had decided on the appointments based on merit, performance, experience, character, and conduct along with the need for adequate representation.
In the case of Calcutta High Court, the apex court collegium has approved the recommendation provided by its Chief Justice and has given the go-ahead for the elevation of five lawyers for the position of the court judges.
The lawyers cleared are Sabyasachi Chaudhury, Shampa Sarkar, Arindam Mukherjee, Ravi Krishan Kapur, and Sakya Sen.
With respect to Madras High Court, the apex court collegium recommended that nine advocates be elevated as judges while rejecting two others. The following were elevated: PT Asha, C Emalias, Subramonium Prasad, M Nirmal Kumar, N Anand Venkatesh, Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy, Krishnan Ramasamy, GK Ilanthiraiyan, and C Saravanan .
Judges Appointments Also Made
In addition to these appointments, the apex court collegium has approved the appointment of 25 additional judges to the position of permanent judges in five high courts. These include
- Justices Sandeep Sharma and Chander Sharma for Himachal Pradesh High Court,
- Justice Narendar G for Karnataka High Court,
- Justices Ananda Sen and Anant Bijay Singh for Jharkhand High Court and
- Justices Sanjay Agrawal and Rajendra Chandra Singh Samant for Chhattisgarh High Court.
For Madhya Pradesh High Court , 18 additional judges were recommended for being appointed as permanent judges after the collegium rejected the complaints made against the judges.