Judiciary Watch: Sixteen new additional judges appointed in three High Courts

After recently being berated by the Supreme Court of India for “sitting on” files, the Centre, it would appear, is clearing judicial appointments thick and fast..Last month alone, it approved sixteen persons to be judges of three different High Courts. The greatest beneficiary of this move is the Allahabad High Court, to which eleven additional judges have been appointed..As a result, the number of vacant posts has reduced to 73, from 83 last month..Those elevated to the High Court include Rajul Bhargava, Siddhartha Varma, Sangeeta Chandra, DS Tripathi, SK Singh, Virendra Kumar, SK Agrawal, Sanjay Harkauli, KP Singh, Rekha Dikshit and SN Agnihotri JJ..The Rajasthan High Court has also seen four elevations; Senior Advocate Sanjeev Prakash Sharma is amongst them. The other names are Dr. PS Bhati, Dinesh Mehta and VK Mathur JJ. Birendra Kumar J has been appointed as an additional judge of the Patna High Court..Apart from these are the eighteen elevations reported earlier. The high courts of Delhi, Gauhati and Karnataka saw five elevations each, while three judges were appointed to the Madras High Court..Three additional judges of the Bombay High Court – KL Wadane, Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi and Indira Jain JJ – have been made permanent..As a result of the retirement of Chief Justice GC Gupta, NN Mhatre J has taken over as Acting Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court..Five judges are due to retire in the month of December: Mohammad Tahir and AN Mittal JJ from the Allahabad High Court, Sunita Gupta J from the Delhi High Court, SK Thodiyil J from the Kerala High Court and RK Datta J from the Patna High Court..Below is a list of vacancies in the higher judiciary as of December 1: