SC collegium recommends appointment of 16 permanent judges in Allahabad HC

The Supreme Court collegium on Tuesday recommended appointment of 16 additional permanent judges to the Allahabad High Court and deferred the recommendation of four additional judges.

The three-member collegium headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said that it has considered the views of consultee colleagues (top court judges), the report of Judgement Evaluation Committee, views of the state government and observation of Department of Justice.

The collegium, also comprising Justices S A Bobde and N V Ramana, said there were certain unconfirmed inputs touching upon conduct/behaviour of some of the recommendees.

"In our view, the same deserve to be ignored as we do not find any substance therein," the collegium said about such certain unconfirmed inputs.

The names of the 16 Permanent Judges are: Justices Rajiv Joshi, Salil Kumar Rai, Jayant Banerji, Rajesh Singh Chauhan, Saral Srivastava, Jahangir Jamshed Munir, Rajiv Gupta, Siddharth, Ajit Kumar, Rajnish Kumar, Abdul Moin, Dinesh Kumar Singh, Rajeev Misra, Vivek Kumar Singh, Chandra Dhari Singh and Ajay Bhanot.

The four whose names were deferred are: Justices Rahul Chaturvedi, Irshad Ali, Neeraj Tiwari and Virendra Kumar-II.

The collegium, clarified that their proposals for appointment as permanent judges would be taken up for consideration on receipt of certain additional information from the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court.

The Allahabad High Court collegium had on February 18 recommended 19 names of additional judges for the appointment.

It had on April 8 has unanimously recommended the name of additional judge Virendra Kumar-II for appointment as Permanent Judges of the High Court.

All the names recommended by the Allahabad High Court collegium had the concurrence of Uttar Pradesh Governor as also the Chief Minister.