SC recommends making 25 HC judges permanent, elevation of 19 lawyers

The Supreme Court collegium has recommended the appointment of 25 additional judges as permanent judges in five high courts and elevated 19 lawyers as judges in three high courts. 

The top court collegium comprising Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and two seniormost judges, Justices J Chelameswar and Ranjan Gogoi, recommended the appointments.

The meeting, held on December 4, gave its nod for the elevation of five lawyers as judges in Karnataka High Court on the recommendation of its chief justice earlier this year.

Among the lawyers elevated as judges in the high court were Dixit Krishna Shripad, Shankar Ganapathi Pandit, Ramakrishna Devdas, Bhotanhosur Mallikarjuna Shyam Prasad and Siddappa Sunil Dutt Yadav.

The collegium also took into account the disagreement between the Karnataka Chief Minister and certain bodies of advocates over non-representation of cross-sections of the society on the bench of the high court. The Chief Minister had advised that the entire proposal be returned to the High Court for reconsideration.

The apex court body said the high court collegium had taken into account merit, experience, performance, character and conduct of the recommendees and dealt with adequate representation.

With regard to Calcutta High Court, the apex court collegium accepted the recommendation of the Chief Justice and gave its nod for elevation of five lawyers as judges.

Names of those lawyers cleared for elevation include Shampa Sarkar, Sabyasachi Chaudhury, Ravi Krishan Kapur, Arindam Mukherjee, and Sakya Sen.

The apex court collegium also recommended for elevation of nine advocates as judges of Madras high court while rejecting the name of two advocates.

Advocates C Emalias, P T Asha, M Nirmal Kumar, Subramonium Prasad, Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy, N Anand Venkatesh, G K Ilanthiraiyan, Krishnan Ramasamy, and C Saravanan were elevated as judges of the Madras High Court.

Besides making recommendation of elevation of advocates as judges in different high court, the apex court collegium also gave its nod for making 25 additional judges as permanent judges of five high courts.

Among those who were made permanent judges include Justices Sandeep Sharma and Chander Sharma for Himachal Pradesh High Court, Justice Narendar G for Karnataka High Court, Justices Ananda Sen and Anant Bijay Singh for Jharkhand High Court and Justices Sanjay Agrawal and Rajendra Chandra Singh Samant for Chhattisgarh High Court.

Eighteen additional judges were recommended for being made permanent judges in Madhya Pradesh high court after the collegium rejected various complaints against the judges.