HCs of Bombay, Calcutta and Allahabad face Judge shortage – Times of India

Calcutta High Court (File photo)

NEW DELHI: Three large High Courts of Allahabad, Bombay and Calcutta, working with over 40% vacancies in judge posts, may have to wait for years to get sanctioned strength of judges going by the pace with which both the Centre and the Supreme Court Collegium are dealing with names recommended for appointment as Judges.
The Allahabad HC with a sanctioned strength of 160 Judges is functioning with just 96 of them. In the Bombay HC out of sanctioned strength of 94 Judges, 30 are lying vacant. The situation is alarming in Calcutta High Court, where 38 of 72 Judge posts are vacant. Allahabad HC has nearly 10 lakh pendency, Bombay HC 4.5 lakh and Calcutta HC has 2.3 lakh pending cases.
But, this seems to have little impact on the Centre and SC Collegium, both of which are sitting over a number of names recommended by the respective HCs for urgent appointment as Judges to help ease the pressure exerted on existing judges by the enormous pending caseload.
If the Collegium has been seized of 23 names recommended by various HCs across India for periods ranging from nine to 33 months, the Centre is allowing dust to gather for periods ranging between five months to 18 months on 16 names cleared by the SC Collegium. These 16 names include five advocates, who were recommended by the SC Collegium to the Centre for appointment as Judges of Calcutta HC way back on July 25, 2019. It also included six names sent by Collegium for appointment as Delhi HC Judges five months ago.
But, from the statistics available with TOI, it appears that Centre takes a long time in forwarding to the SC Collegium the names proposed by the High Courts for appointment as Judges. As per the procedure, once the HCs send the names to the Centre, the government gets a IB verification done for each proposed name and then completes the file before sending it to SC Collegium for scrutinising the suitability of each person. After the evaluation process, the SC collegium recommends appointment of the suitable persons as HC judges.
The Bombay HC had sent a proposal April 15 last year to the Centre for appointment of 22 persons, 18 advocates and four judicial officers, as Judges. The verification and preparation of files of each person took the government nearly eight months and the names were forwarded to the SC Collegium on December 11 last year.
The Calcutta HC had proposed elevation of eight judicial officers on january 22 last year. The government took 11 months to forward these names to the SC Collegium.
Of the 41 names proposed by Allahabad HC, ten were sent to the government on December 19, 2019, which were forwarded to the Collegium on December 11 last year. Other 31 names were proposed by the HC on May 24 last year and the government took eight months before forwarding it to Collegium on January 29.