TRANSPARENCY IN TRANSFER AND APPOINTMENT OF JUDGES : A BIG QUESTION

Article 222 of the Constitution of India talks about the transfer of judges from one High Court to another and Article 217 states the procedure for appointing judges of the High Court.

TRANSFERSRecently, the Central Government notified transfer of 7 High Court judges. Out of the 7, six of those namely, Justices Rajan Gupta, PB Bajanthri, Sanjeev Prakash Sharma, T Amarnath Goud, Subhash Chand and TS Sivagnanam were recommended by the Supreme Court Collegium via meeting dated 16th September. The 7th Judge i.e., Justice Sureshwar Thakur, were recommended by the Collegium on 21st September.

NEW APPOINTMENTS

Rajasthan High CourtThe Central Government has notified the appointment of five new judges, namely, Farzand Ali, Sudesh Bansal, Anoop Kumar Dhand, Vinod Kumar Bharwani and Madan Gopal Vyas.The Rajasthan High Court has a sanctioned strength of 50 judges, 38 permanent and 12 Additional, but presently , it is functioning at 23 judges. The figures are evident to show that there is a vacancy of more than 50 percent.

Allahabad High CourtThe Central Government has notified the appointment of 8 lawyers as additional judges of the Allahabad High Court. They are Chandra Kumar Rai, Krishan Pahal, Sameer Jain, Ashutosh Srivastava, Subhash Vidyarthi, Brij Raj Singh, Shree Prakash Singh & Vikas Budhwa.These name were recommended by the Supreme Court Collegium on 24th August.Ever since Justice NV Ramana became the Chief Justice of India, he has been actively holding the Collegium meetings to fill up the rising vacancies in High Courts around India which were leading to a record-high pendency due to the pandemic.

However, the question of transparency in the Appointment of Judges to the Higher Judiciary still remains a big concern which may need to be addressed by the Collegium and Law Ministry very soon.