President gives assent to appointment of six judges to Calcutta High Court

President of India Ram Nath Kovind has given his assent to the appointment of six new additional judges to the Calcutta High Court. As reported earlier, the six new appointees are:

1. Rajasekhar Mantha
2. Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya
3. Protik Prakash Banerjee
4. Moushumi Bhattacharya
5. Rajarshi Bharadwaj
6. Shekhar B. Saraf

Among the six Judges is Shekhar Bobby Saraf, a graduate of National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Saraf is the first NLSIU graduate to be elevated to the Bench.

The Centre’s decision to act on approving these appointments comes after some scathing observations were made by the High Court regarding the failure of the Centre in appointing judges to the High Court.

The observations were made by a Bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Debi Prosad Dey in an anticipatory bail application of a Bengali Film Actor, Bikram Chatterjee.

Presently, a mere 31 judges are functioning at the High Court as against a sanctioned strength of 72. These appointments will reduce the vacancies – which now stand at 41 – to 35, less than half of the sanctioned strength.

Recently, the Allahabad High Court saw the appointment of 19 additional judges, whereas six judges were appointed to the High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad for AP & Telangana.

Read the Notification: