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Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC)

05 September 2019

Shekhar Bobby Saraf, an NLSIU Bangalore 1996 graduate, has been one of five appointed as permanent judge of the Calcutta high court in the latest law ministry notification of judicial appointments.

22 May 2019

The Supreme Court has today confirmed the elevation of ex-Calcutta high court judge and, since August 2018, Jharkhand high-court chief justice Aniruddha Bose, alongside justices AS Bopanna, BR Gavai and Surya Kant, according to NDTV and others.

27 March 2019

Judicial appointments from law firms (and from NLSIU Bangalore) are beginning to come thick and fast these days (relatively speaking), no doubt reflecting the growing maturity of both in India’s legal system.

22 February 2019

Dua Associates Chennai partner Senthil Kumar Ramamoorthy has now been confirmed and appointed as additional judge of the Madras high court.

10 February 2018

Senior advocate JP Cama called for a mandamus to bulldoze the process of judicial appointments and prevent judicial vacancy of nearly 45% at the Supreme Court, which is expected in the next 11 months.

15 September 2017

NLSIU Bangalore 1996 alumnus Shekhar Bobby Saraf is set to be elevated to the bench at the Calcutta high court, making national law university (NLU) history as the first NLU graduate to have made it to the higher judiciary.

23 August 2016

On 17 August, before it broke for a long weekend of four days, a three-judge Supreme Court (SC) bench of justices Ranjan Gogoi, Prafulla Chandra Pant and AM Khanwilkar referred a challenge to its immunity from the Right to Information (RTI) Act to a five-judge constitution bench. The decision, made after a brief hearing, was a surprise as well as a disappointment.

13 February 2016

The Supreme Court collegium has transferred four Delhi high court judges to other high courts.

13 January 2016

The collegium will not wait for the government’s new procedural guidelines on transparent judicial appointments, to start the process of appointment of 400 new high court judges and five new Supreme Court judges, reported the Hindustan Times.

High courts across India are facing 445 judicial vacancies at the moment, amounting to 57 per cent vacancy and facing a case pendency of 45 lakh.

No appointments were made in the higher judiciary ever since 2014 when the government notified the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC). After the Supreme Court struck down the NJAC in October 2015, on 16 December it directed the government to formulate a new memorandum of process (MoP) for transparency in judicial appointments.

But the MoP is still not finalised and will likely take time due to the opinions of many stakeholders asked for, the government informed the court.

Union law minister DV Sadananda Gowda also recently announced his plan to appoint 115 high court judges to fight the rising toll of judicial vacancies expected to rise to 472 in India’s high courts by end of June.

30 November 2015

Madras high court is set to break its own judicial vacancy record by March 2016, functioning at 40 less judges than its sanctioned strength of 75 judges, reported Times of India.

Madras, along side Delhi, is the fourth largest out of 24 Indian high courts, according to the Department of Justice.

The central government increased the sanctioned strength of judges in each high court by 25 per cent in February this year, and in Madras in the last two years while 10 judges have retired none have been appointed. Justice V M Velumani, on 21 December 2013, was the last judge to be sworn in at the court.

The high court had recalled 12 prospective judge names recommended by the collegium, in an unprecedented move in February 2014, after protest by lawyers, as then reported by Legally India.

Nine names were recommended, after that recall, by the current collegium.

The 24 high courts across the country have a sanctioned strength of 1,170 judges but they are working with about 60 percent of their sanctioned strength. There are 370 vacancies in the high courts.

15 May 2015

ThappetaAdvocate and patent lawyer Naren Thappeta, armed with rigorous data, argues that ‘Eminent People’ must consider metrics in judicial appointments.

07 May 2015

Attorney General of India Mukul Rohatgi attacked the collegium system during his arguments in the Supreme Court yesterday defending the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC), using the example of allegations of bias and nepotism in 2013 judicial appointments, reported the Indian Express.

He cited former Gujarat high court chief justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya’s letter to the president that had alleged that the then-chief justice of India (CJI) Altamas Kabir had impeded his elevation to the Supreme Court because he had earlier, as part of the collegium, opposed the elevation of Kabir’s sister to the Calcutta high court.

“I dare say this but there are several examples like this. And what was the weightage given to the letter written by a fellow judge? How was that not important to collegium?” Rohatgi told the Constitution Bench led by Justice JS Khehar, as reported by /Express/.

Kabir’s sister Shukla Kabir Sinha was appointed as a Calcutta high court judge in 2010 by a collegium in which Kabir had recused himself from the decision, while Bhattacharya, who was also a part of the collegium, had objected to her elevation.

01 May 2015

The Supreme Court process to apply for judicial clerkships has moved online, according to a notification on the Supreme Court website today.

Candidates can apply for clerkships here.

Hat-tip @mohitsingh8 on Twitter.