Calcutta HC gets three new judges, 41 additional judges made permanent

The attempts of lawyers in Calcutta to draw the Centre’s attention towards filling up vacancies in the Calcutta High Court seem to have borne fruit, with three new judges being appointed..As per the notification on the Department of Justice website, Shampa Sarkar, Ravi Krishan Kapur and Arindam Mukherjee have been appointed additional judges of the Calcutta High Court..This development comes in the background of week-long abstentions undertaken by lawyers in Calcutta. After their demands initially fell on deaf ears, lawyers in the city resolved to renew their strike for another week, prompting action to be taken..However, the problem seems to be far from resolved, with the High Court still facing a large number of vacancies. With three new appointments, the number of vacancies will come down to 39, as against a sanctioned strength of 72 judges..In a break from tradition, the Centre seems to have acted on Collegium resolutions with surprising haste, signing off on the recommendation to make 41 additional judges across five high courts, permanent. 24 of these recommendations were made by the Collegium in the last two weeks..Seventeen additional judges from the Madhya Pradesh High Court have been made permanent. They are Justices Atul Shreedharan, Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari, Vivek Rusia, Anand Pathak, Jagdish Prasad Gupta, Anurag Kumar Shrivastava, Housla Prasad Singh, Ashok Kumar Joshi, Vivek Agarwal, Nandita Dubey, Rajeev Kumar Dubey, Anjuli Palo, Virender Singh, SK Awasthi, Vijay Kumar Shukla, GS Ahluwalia, and Subodh Abhyankar. The Collegium had recommended 18 judges to be made permanent back in December 2017; However, Justice Ved Prakash Sharma has since retired..Ten additional judges of the Rajasthan High Court – Justices Ganga Ram Moolchandani, Deepak Maheshwari, Vijay Kumar Vyas, Goverdhan Bardhar, Pankaj Bhandari, Dinesh Chandra Somani, Sanjeev Prakash Sharma, Dr. Pushpendra Singh Bhati, Dinesh Mehta, and Vinit Kumar Mathur – have been made permanent..Seven Gujarat High Court additional judges – Justices RP Dholaria, Ashutosh J Shastri, Biren A Vaishnav, Alpesh Y Kogje, Arvindsingh I Supehia, and BN Karia, Justice KJ Thaker – have been made permanent. Six judges of the Bombay High Court – Justices Prakash Deu Naik, Makarand Subhash Karnik, Swapna Sanjiv Joshi, Kishor Kalesh Sonawane, Sangitrao Shamrao Patil, and Nutan Dattaram Sardessai have also been made permanent judges..Justice Songkhupchung Serto, who was recommended as a permanent judge of the Gauhati High Court just earlier this week, has been made permanent..Read the notifications:.Calcutta HC:.Bombay HC:.Rajasthan HC:.Gujarat HC:.Madhya Pradesh HC:.Gauhati HC: