Supreme Court gets a new judge, two High Court Chief Justices transferred
As the government continues to pick and choose from collegium recommendations on the appointment, elevation and transfer of judges, the delay in acting upon the recommendations peeks from under the carpet.
Published on: 15 January 2025, 08:41 am
ON Monday, the Union government notified the appointment of Krishnan Vinod Chandran, the Chief Justice of Patna High Court, as a judge of the Supreme Court. He is likely to take the oath of office on Thursday, to be administered by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sanjiv Khanna.
With the appointment of Justice Chandran, the Supreme Court will be functioning with 33 judges against the sanctioned posts of 34 judges, including the CJI. The Supreme Court judge Hrishikesh Roy is slated to retire on January 31.
On January 7, the collegium comprising CJI Khanna and Justices B.R. Gavai, Surya Kant, Hrishikesh Roy and Abhay S. Oka had recommended the name of Justice Chandran as judge of the Supreme Court.
In their recommendation, the collegium had noted that there was no representation on the Bench of the Supreme Court from the High Court of Kerala. Until recently, Justice C.T. Ravikumar represented the High Court of Kerala in the Supreme Court. Justice Ravikumar retired on January 5.
At present, the Supreme Court Bench has no representation from the high courts of Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, Meghalaya, Orissa, Sikkim and Tripura.
Justice Chandran was appointed as a judge of the High Court of Kerala on November 8, 2011, and was elevated as the Chief Justice of the High Court of Judicature at Patna on March 29, 2023, and has been functioning as the Chief Justice of that high court since then.
On Tuesday, the government also notified the transfer of Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya as Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court and Chief Justice of Telangana High Court Alok Aradhe as Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court.
On January 7, the collegium had ordered this reshuffle for reasons not made available to the public.
The government's selective approach to the recommendations of the collegium has continued unabated. The government has continued to sit over the collegium's recommendation made on November 27 to transfer the Delhi High Court judge C.D. Singh to the Allahabad High Court.
The government has also withheld the transfers of as many as four judges of the Gujarat High Court. On August 3, 2023, a five-judge collegium of the Supreme Court decided to transfer Justices Alpesh Y. Kogje, Kumari Gita Gopi, Hemant M. Prachchhak and Samir J. Dave to the high courts of Allahabad, Madras, Patna and Rajasthan respectively.
However, the recommendations have been gathering dust at the Union ministry of law and justice for over a year.