The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought a response from states and all high courts on the three-fold salary hike recommended for trial court judges by the Second National Judicial Pay Commission (SNJPC) of Justice E Padmanabhan. A three-judge bench of Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justices P Sathasivam and B S Chauhan,before whom the report was placed on Tuesday,granted four weeks time for the response and posted the matter for further hearing to September 1. Justice Padmanabhan has fixed a whooping salary scale starting from Rs 73,370 for a district judge (super time scale) as against the existing Rs 24,850 fixed by the First National Judicial Pay Commission of Justice Jagannatha Shetty. Following is the increase in starting salary of various other grades of judges along with the previous figures. District judge-selection grade Rs 63,995 (Rs 20,800),district judge-entry level Rs 57,310 (Rs 18,625),civil judge-senior division entry level Rs 46,770 (Rs 15,200) and civil judge-junior division entry level Rs 36,235 (Rs 11,775). The recommendations for higher pay scale comes in the backdrop of a similar pay hike effected for the Chief Justice of India,judges of the Supreme Court and judges of the high courts. The Government had on January 3 this year brought in an ordinance hiking the salary of the Chief Justice of India to Rs one lakh as against (Rs 33,000),SC judges and Chief Justices of High Courts to Rs 90,000 (Rs 30,000) and high court judges to Rs 80,000 (Rs 26,000).
