Five new judges appointed to Karnataka High Court [Read Notification]

The Central government has cleared the names of five judicial officers for appointment as judges of Karnataka High Court.

The Judicial Officers whose names have been cleared are:

– Ashok Golappa Nijagannavar,

– Hethur Puttaswamy Gowda Sandesh,

– Krishnan Natarajan,

– Pralhadrao Govindrao Mutalik Patil, and

– Appasaheb Shantappa Bellunke

The notification issued by the Ministry of Law and Justice states that the appointment of Ashok Golappa Nijagannavar, Hethur Puttaswamy Gowda Sandesh and Krishnan Natarajan would be for a period of two years. The appointment of Pralhadrao Govindrao Mutalik Patil would be till February 19, 2020 while that of Appasaheb Shantappa Bellunke would be till August 2, 2019.

The names of these five judicial officers were recommended for High Court judgeship by the Collegium headed by former CJI Dipak Misra on August 1, 2018.

The Centre today also signed off on the proposal to make seven additional judges of the Karnataka High Court permanent.

The seven judges who have been made permanent are Justices Kempaiah Somashekar, KS Mudagal, Sreenivas H Kumar, John Michael Cunha, Basavaraj A Patil, NK Sudhindrarao, and Dr HB Prabhakara Sastry. The Supreme Court Collegium had recommended the same last month.

Read the notification below.