On a day it brought into force a law to appoint members to the higher judiciary, government today appointed 22 Additional Judges and transferred the Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court based on recommendations of the collegium which the new legislation seeks to replace.
Justice Dhirendra Hiralal Waghela, Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court was transferred as the Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court.
A Law Ministry statement said additional judges have been appointed to the Kerala High Court including Shaji Paul Chaly, Anu Sivaraman, Raja Vijayaraghavan Valsala, Bhaskaran Pillai Sudheendra Kumar, Keloth Puthenpura Jyothindranath, Mary Joseph and Sunil Thomas.
Five additional judges in the Allahabad High Court were also elevated as permanent judges. Those elevated include Justices Karuna Nand Bajpayee, Manoj Kumar Gupta, Anjani Kumar Mishra, Mahesh Chandra Tripathi and Suneet Kumar.
Ramendra Jain was appointed as Additional Judge to the Punjab and Haryana High Court while Ratnaker Bhengra was made Additional Judge in the Jharkhand High Court.
Krushna Ram Mohapatra, Jatindra Prasad Das, Durga Prasanna Choudhury were appointed as Additional Judges of the Orissa High Court, another statement said.
Appointments of aditional judges were also made to the Patna High Court and Madras High Court.
Justice Rajiv Sharma, Judge of the Allahabad High Court, was transferred as a Judge of the Calcutta High Court.
Against the total approved strenght of 998 judges in the 24 High courts, there are 358 vacancies, as per the Department of Justice data.
