Judiciary Watch: Allahabad HC gets 9 additional judges, Punjab & Haryana HC gets 6

The President of the India has signed off on the appointment of nine new additional judges to the Allahabad High Court and six new additional judges to the Punjab & Haryana High Court.

The new appointees at the Allahabad HC are:

1. Akhilesh Chandra Sharma
2. Krishna Singh
3. Rajiv Lochan Mehrotra
4. Mahboob Ali
5. Rang Nath Pandey
6. Ifaqat Ali Khan
7. Aniruddha Singh
8. Dinesh Kumar Singh
9. Umesh Chandra Tripathi

The first six will serve terms ranging from nine months to one year, whereas the last three judges will serve for two years.

As reported earlier, Arvind Singh Sangwan, Rajbir Sehrawat, Anil Kshetarpal, Avneesh Jhingan, Mahabir Singh Sindhu, and Sudhir Mittal have been appointed to the Punjab & Haryana HC. All six fresh appointees are from the Bar. Prior to that, Raj Shekhar Attri and Gurvinder Singh Gill had been appointed to the High Court.

Last month, six additional judges were appointed to the Madras High Court, whereas three were appointed to the Chhattisgarh High Court. The High Courts of Jharkhand and Manipur saw the appointments of N Kotiswar Singh and Dhirubhai Nanabhai Patel JJ respectively as Acting Chief Justices of those courts.

The number of vacancies across the twenty-four high courts now stands at 414, as against a sanctioned strength of 1079 judges.

As many as eight judges from five high courts will attain superannuation this month. Three of the imminent retirees – M Jeyapaul, Sneh Prashar and Darshan Singh JJ – are from the Punjab & Haryana High Court. Sanjay Kumar Agrawal and Anil Kumar Shukla JJ of the Chhattisgarh High Court will also retire, along with Tapash Mookherjee J of the Calcutta High Court, Bijoor Manohar J of the Karnataka High Court, and S Pratap Singh J from the Patna High Court.