[Ad-hoc judges in High Courts] Some courts troubled by pendency in specific subjects; needs to be addressed: Supreme Court to Central government

The Supreme Court recently granted more time to the Central government to file a status report on whether recommendations for appointment of ad-hoc judges in High Courts have been made so far in compliance with an order from last year [Lok Prahari through its General Secretary SN Shukla v. Union of India]..A Bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, AS Oka and Vikram Nath asked Attorney General KK Venugopal to also look into the aspect of arrears in specific subjects before the High Courts."Another aspect, with experience, we are finding is that though we have put a bar of not more than 20% vacancies for making recommendation for ad-hoc judges, the fact remains that some of the Courts where there are large number of vacancies are also troubled with arrears and in some specific subjects. We request learned Attorney General to give a thought to this process as to how this particular aspect can be addressed," the order reads. The matter will be heard next on September 27..The Supreme Court in April last year had given the green signal for appointment of ad-hoc judges to High Courts under Article 224A of the Constitution.Th top court ruled that a vacancy position of more than 20 per cent of the sanctioned strength of the High Court would be a trigger for the Chief Justice of the concerned High Court to initiate such appointments.The judgment was delivered by a Bench of then Chief Justice of India SA Bobde and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Surya Kant in a petition filed by NGO Lok Prahari.As per the judgment, other considerations for the appointment of ad hoc judges would be:Cases in a particular category are pending for over five years;More than 10 per cent of pending cases are over five years old;The percentage of the rate of disposal is lower than the institution of the cases either in a particular subject matter or generally in the Court;Even if there are not many old cases pending, depending on the jurisdiction, a situation of mounting arrears is likely to arise if the rate of disposal is consistently lower than the rate of filing over a period of a year or more..However, the top court made it clear that the process will not be a substitute for regular appointments. Since judges are already appointed through a warrant of appointment, the occasion to refer the matter to the Intelligence Bureau (IB) or other agencies would not arise in such cases, which would itself shorten the time taken, the Court noted.The Court clarified that a period of about three months should be sufficient to process a recommendation. Thus, ideally, a Chief Justice should start the process three months in advance.Carving out the role of ad-hoc judges, the three-judge Bench stated that the primary objective would be to deal with long pending arrears and that the said objective will be "subserved by assigning more than five year old cases to the ad hoc Judges so appointed".The Supreme Court also barred ad hoc judges from performing any other legal work whether it be advisory, arbitration or appearance.With respect to emoluments and allowances of an ad hoc Judge, the top court ordered that it should be at par with a permanent judge of that Court at the relevant stage of time, minus the pension. Further, the number of ad hoc judges in a High Court should be in the range of two to five..During the hearing of the case, the Central government had expressed reservations regarding the appointment of ad-hoc judges, stating that such appointments could be derogatory to the concerned judge and retired judges might be more interested in other lucrative avenues like arbitration.CJI Bobde had, however, brushed aside such concerns, stating that the consent of the concerned judge would be obtained before he/she is appointed as an ad-hoc judge..[Read order]