Deepali Kalia
There are seven vacancies in Supreme Court, 2 High Courts have been operating without regular Chief Justices and 2 High Courts Chief Justices will be retiring in the next one and a half months, stated a government functionary.
He further added that the government has been awaiting the recommendations from the Supreme Court collegium in order to fill up the vacancies.
The Supreme Court currently is operating with just 27 judges, falling short of its sanctioned strength of 34.
The first vacancy in the apex court arose when Justice Ranjan Gogoi retired as Chief Justice of India in Nov 2019.
Subsequently retirements of Justices Arun Mishra, Indu Malhotra, Deepak Gupta, R Bhanumathi and SA Bobde demitting his office as CJI in April and Justice Mohan M Shantanagoudar who passed away in April caused more vacancies to appear.
Furthermore, Acting Chief Justices are running the high courts of Calcutta and Allahabad.
Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh High Court will retire in coming June and Chief Justice of Chhattisgarh High Court will retire later this month.
According to May 1 figures on the Department of Justice website, 25 high courts of the country with a unified sanctioned strength of 1,080 judges are currently operating with just 660. Hence, falling short of 420 judges.
Retirement, Resignation and Elevation of Judges is causing an increase in the no. of vacancies.
Recently, Supreme Court had issued guidelines for the Chief Justices of High Court for appointment of Adhoc Judges due to the vacancies in High Courts.