The Centre on Wednesday cleared the appointment of Karnataka High Court Chief Justice Prasanna B Varale as judge of the Supreme Court. The appointment comes less than a week after the Supreme Court Collegium headed by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud recommended him on January 19. “In exercise of the powers conferred by the Constitution of India, Hon’ble President, after consultation with Hon’ble Chief Justice of India, is pleased to appoint Sh Justice Prasanna Bhalachandra Varale, Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court as Judge of Supreme Court of India,” Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said in a post on X on Wednesday. In exercise of the powers conferred by the Constitution of India, Hon’ble President, after consultation with Hon’ble Chief Justice of India, is pleased to appoint Sh Justice Prasanna Bhalachandra Varale, Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court as Judge of Supreme Court of India — Arjun Ram Meghwal (@arjunrammeghwal) January 24, 2024 With this appointment, the Supreme Court will once again function at its full-strength of 34 judges. The lone vacancy was created when Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul retired in December last year. “The Supreme Court of India has operated almost throughout last year with full strength of thirty-four Judges and, therefore, could achieve the distinction of recording an unprecedented rate of disposal by disposing of 52191 cases in the calendar year 2023,” the Collegium resolution had stated. “Bearing in mind that the workload of judges has increased considerably, it has become necessary to ensure that the Court has full working judge-strength at all times,” the statement had added. Apart from CJI Chandrachud, the five-member Collegium that recommends SC judges also comprises of Justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, Surya Kant and Aniruddha Bose. The Collegium said that Justice Varale, whose parent High Court is the Bombay High Court, is a “competent judge with unimpeachable conduct and integrity and has throughout maintained high standard of professional ethics.” The Collegium also underlined that it has taken into consideration the fact that Justice Varale belongs to the Scheduled Caste and ranks sixth in the All-India list of seniority of High Court judges.
