After Supreme Court flagged delay, appointment of 8 HC Chief Justices gets nod

On Friday, while hearing the contempt petition and a PIL which sought a “fixed time limit” for the Centre to notify the appointment of Judges recommended by the Collegium, the Supreme Court had asked the Centre to submit a status report on the recommendations that the Collegium had reiterated, specifying “what is the difficulty in making those appointments”.

The Bench, led by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, had underlined that the Collegium is not a “search committee”.

Announcing the appointments on Saturday, Union Minister of State (independent charge) for Law and Justice Arjun Ram Meghwal said in a post on X: “In exercise of the powers conferred by the Constitution of India, the President is pleased to appoint/ transfer the following Chief Justices of High Courts.” According to the list:

📌 Delhi High Court Acting Chief Justice Manmohan has been appointed as Delhi HC Chief Justice.

📌 Justice Rajiv Shakdher of the Delhi HC has been appointed Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh HC.

📌 Justice Suresh Kumar Kait of the Delhi HC has been appointed Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh HC.

📌 Justice Indra Prasanna Mukerji of the Calcutta HC has been appointed Chief Justice of the Meghalaya HC.

📌 Justice Nitin Madhukar Jamdar of the Bombay HC has been appointed Chief Justice of the Kerala HC.

📌 Acting Chief Justice Tashi Rabstan of the J&K and Ladakh HC has been appointed Chief Justice of the same court.

📌 Justice Shriram Kalpathi Rajendran of the Bombay HC has been appointed Chief Justice of the Madras HC.

📌 Himachal Pradesh HC Chief Justice M S Ramachandra Rao has been transferred as Jharkhand HC Chief Justice.

The Supreme Court Collegium for appointment of HC Judges had first recommended these appointment, barring Justice Mukerji, on July 11. As the recommendations remained pending with the Centre, the Collegium made some changes and issued another resolution on September 17.

In July, the Collegium — comprising the CJI and two most senior Judges of the Supreme Court — had recommended the appointment of Justices Suresh Kumar Kait, G S Sandhawalia and Tashi Rabstan as the Chief Justices of the HCs in J&K and Ladakh, Madhya Pradesh and Meghalaya respectively.

It changed this in September, listing Justices Kait and Tashi Rabstan for the Madhya Pradesh and J&K and Ladakh HCs respectively, while pushing Justice Sandhawalia’s appointment until after Justice Shakdher retires on October 18. Following Justice Shakdher’s retirement, Justice Sandhawalia was recommended to take over as Himachal HC Chief Justice. In addition to these changes, Justice Mukerji was added to the list, for appointment as the Meghalaya HC Chief Justice.

In its contempt petition, the Jharkhand government had said its HC had been functioning without a regular Chief Justice since December 2023, with the exception of former Chief Justice B R Sarangi’s 15-day tenure in July — the Centre cleared his appointment six months after the Collegium’s recommendation.

In 2021, a Supreme Court Bench led by then CJI S A Bobde had set timelines for various stages of the appointment process for Judges. After a recommendation is sent, the Centre must either make the appointment or return the recommendation with specific reasons “immediately”, it had said. If the Collegium “reiterates” the same recommendation — which the Centre is typically bound to accept — the appointment should be made in three-four weeks, it had said.

Since then, delays in appointments of Judges have been flagged from time to time. In 2021, then CJI N V Ramana mentioned pending recommendations in his speech at the launch of the ‘Pan India Legal Awareness and Outreach Campaign’ of the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA).

The issue was also dealt with in court by a Bench comprising Justices S K Kaul (now retired) and Sudhanshu Dhulia in November 2023, while hearing a contempt petition filed by the Advocates Association of Bangalore alleging that the Centre had failed to abide by the court’s 2021 decision on timelines for Judges’ appointments.