NEW DELHI: Law minister Sadananda Gowda on Tuesday blamed the present collegium system of appointment of judges for existing vacancies in the high courts.
Against a sanctioned strength of 984 judges in 24 high courts (HCs), there are only 636 judges at present, with almost 348 posts or nearly 35% vacant. The Allahabad HC has the highest vacancies (75) against a sanctioned strength of 160 judges.
The law minister said the government had recently increased the sanctioned strength of these HCs, given the large pendency of cases. Of the total pendency of 3.2 crore cases, pendency in HCs stands at over 44 lakh.
“A large number of vacant posts of judges is one of the several reasons in slowing down the process of expeditious disposal of cases,” he said.
Referring to the SC judgment of October 6, 1993 and its advisory opinion of October 28, 1998 which led to the present collegium system of judges appointing judges, Gowda said, “In this arrangement, a number of posts have remained vacant for want of proposals to fill the positions.”
Gowda said the government has no proposal to increase the strength in the Supreme Court. While the approved strength of the apex court is 31, there were three vacancies as on November 10.
Responding to a question on the ‘meagre’ strength of women judges, he said while there is one woman judge in the Supreme Court, their strength is 55 in the 24 high courts.
He, however, informed Parliament that following a resolution passed by a conference of chief ministers and chief justices of HCs in April last year, efforts are on to increase the strength of judges by 25% in all HCs.
After increasing the number of judges in HCs of Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Orissa, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand between July and October this year, the present strength stands at 984.
TOI | Nov 26, 2014
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