Twenty four additional judges of three high courts were today granted six months' extension amid indication that the Supreme Court collegium may not recommend fresh appointments till a new memorandum of procedure (MoP), a document which guides appointment of members to the higher judiciary, is finalised.
Separate Law Ministry statements said today that 13 additional judges from Calcutta High Court, six from Kerala High Court and five from Bombay High Court have been given extension for six months.
Usually additional judges are appointed for a period of two years and later elevated as permanent judges.
Seeking to overcome the shortage of judges in high courts, government had sought approval from the Supreme Court to extend the terms of judges from three to six months when the validity of the National Judicial Appointments Act was being heard in the apex court. The law was struck down on October 16 last.
Though the collegium system, which the new law sought to overturn, is back, the apex court collegium has indicated that no new fresh appointments will be recommended till the new MoP is finalised.
While deciding on ways to improve the collegium system, the Supreme Court had recently left it to the law ministry to draft the MoP in consultation with CMs and chief justices of the 24 high courts.
The five additional judges from Bombay High Court given extension or granted 'reappointment' are: Vinay Manohar Deshpande, Ajey Shrikant Gadkari, Nitin Wasudeo Sambre, Girish Sharadchandra Kulkarni and Burgess Pesi Colabawalla.
The 13 Calcutta High Court judges granted extension are: Indrajit Chatterjee, Shib Sadhan Sadhu, Sudip Ahluwalia, Tapash Mookherjee, Ranjit Kumar Bag, Ishan Chandra Das, Samapati Chatterjee, Sahidullah Munshi, Subrata Talukdar, Tapabrata Chakraborty, Arindam Sinha, Arijit Banerjee and Debangsu Basak.
However, in the case of justice Shib Sadhan Sadhu, the new appointment is with effect from December 31, 2015 till April 9, 2016 -- date of his superannuation, the statement said.
Six additional judges of the Kerala High Court given extension are: Puttekadan Ubaid, Kandathil Abraham Mathew, Alexander Thomas, Muhamed Mustaque Ayumantakath, Ala Kunnil Jayasankaran Nambiar and Anil Kalavampara Narendran.
The fresh appointments are effective from different dates.
These appointments assume importance as the Supreme Court
is functioning with only 25 judges though its approved strength is 31, including the CJI.
While Justice Thakur will retire on January 3, 2017, five more apex court judges will retire this year. These include Justice A R Dave who will retire on November 18, Justice F M I Kalifulla (July 22), Justice V Gopala Gowda (October 5), Justice Shiva Kirti Singh (November 12) and Justice C Nagappan (October 3).
Former law officer Nageshwar Rao is the fourth member from the Bar recommended for Supreme Court judgeship by the collegium after the Narendra Modi government came to power in 2014.
In 2014, U U Lalit and R F Nariman were appointed as SC judges, but the government had returned the file of former Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium citing negative Intelligence Bureau report.
After a bitter spat with the government, Subramanium had withdrawn his name.
The recommendations come at a time when the Supreme Court collegium is yet to give its view on the draft of the revised memorandum of procedure to the government. So far, the collegium has refrained from recommending names for the apex court.
Hitherto, it had recommended elevating additional judges of high courts as permanent judges. The government, in a bid to increase the judges' strength, had cleared fresh names for appointment as additional judges, the recommendations for which were received before the NJAC Act was struck down by the Supreme Court.
The memorandum, a document which guides the appointment of SC and HC judges, was revised after a Supreme Court bench asked the government to rewrite it in a bid to make collegium system more transparent.
