HC Judge Vacancy, 223 candidates have been recommended against 470 vacancies

Of the 470 vacant positions of judges in the High Courts, the 15 High Courts have recommended names of 223 candidates for appointment. The 15 Courts includes the High Courts in Delhi, Punjab and Haryana, Allahabad, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Guwahati and Bombay. The recommendations were sent to the centre from these courts which the centre would send further to the Supreme Court Collegium for final ascent.

According to the prevailed norms, the recommendations sent by the High Courts to the centre gets processed by the centre by seeking reports from Intelligence Bureau and then it gets forwarded to the SC collegium for a final decision. The SC collegium then recommends some of the names from the list to appoint them as judges. The government either accepts the recommendations made by the collegium or it return to the SC collegium seeking reconsideration from them on particular candidates.

In order to fill up the scarce vacancy in the judge’s post, the centre had recently forwarded 78 names from state judicial services and the bar to the SC collegium for judge appointment. The 24 High Courts present in the country is short of 470 judges at the moment, which is up from the 443 in January, this year. Increasing number of cases has resulted into the need of more judges. Differences between judiciary and executive body over key clauses of documents have also resulted in the rise of vacancies in the courts.

In the later part of 2015, the requirement of judges was registered to be 392, while by the beginning of the year it was 443. Now, according to the new law ministry reports, there are 470 vacant judge seats that need to get filled, with Allahabad High Court being the maximum with 82 seats.