Judiciary Watch: 7 new judges, 16 additional judges across 7 high courts

This month, the President of India has signed off on the appointment of as many as seven judges and sixteen new additional judges across seven high courts in the country..We had earlier reported the appointment of four new judges – Rekha Palli, Pratibha M Singh, Navin Chawla and Hari Shankar JJ to the Delhi High Court..Yesterday, two judges were appointed to the Uttarakhand High Court; Lok Pal Singh and Manoj Kumar Tiwari JJ were sworn in today. Justice BR Pradhan has been appointed as a judge of the Sikkim High Court..As many as six additional judges were appointed to the Patna High Court. The new ad-hoc judges are Anil Kumar Upadhyay, Rajeev Ranjan Prasad, Sanjay Kumar, Madhuresh Prasad and Mohit Kumar Shah..Bimlendu Bhushan Mangalmurti and Anil Kumar Choudhary were appointed as additional judges of the Jharkhand High Court, while Sharad Kumar Sharma was appointed as an additional judge of the Uttarakhand High Court..Two new additional judges – Hitesh Kumar Sarma and Mir Alfaz Ali – were appointed to the Gauhati High Court. The terms of two existing additional judges of this high court – Lansungkum Jamir and Manash Ranjan Pathak – were extended for a period of six months..The Rajasthan High Court saw the appointment of five new additional judges. Ashok Kumar Gaur, Manoj Kumar Garg, Inderjeet Singh, Virendra Kumar Mathur and Ramchandra Singh Jhala are the new appointees..With these latest appointments, the number of vacancies across the twenty-four high courts is at 427. That number will go up with the retirement of six judges (four from the Madras High Court and two from the Rajasthan High Court) this month..As many as nine judges will retire next month, including the controversial Justice CS Karnan from the Calcutta High Court..With the recent retirement of Justice PC Ghose, the Supreme Court now has four vacancies, with a working strength of twenty-seven.