Vacancies in Subordinate Judiciary: SC seeks personal presence of Law Secretaries, Registrars General of HCs

The Supreme Court has ordered the Law Secretaries of States and Registrars General of High Courts to be personally present on July 30 for the hearing of the case concerning vacancies in the subordinate judiciary..The order was passed by a Bench of Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose..The Court has ordered that the concerned authorities of the state governments/Union Territories and the Registrar General of the jurisdictional High Court should inform the Secretary-General of the Supreme Court about the position on filling up of vacancies in the judicial services in each state..They are required to indicate the following to the Secretary-General of Supreme Court:.the total strength of each cadre;the number of posts in different cadres actually filled up;the number of posts in each cadre lying vacant;the number of posts in respect of which selection is presently going on and the stage of the said process of selection and;the number of posts in different cadres for which the process of selection is yet to be initiated..The above information required to be placed before the Supreme Court should be as on June 30, 2019..The Court then directed the four Amici Curiae and the Law Secretaries and Registrars General of the High Courts to be personally present on July 30 for considering the aforesaid aspects of the case..“The learned Amici Curiae appointed for the four groups of States/Union Territories in terms of the order dated 22.10.2018 are requested to be present. The information required to be placed before the Court shall also be made available to the aforesaid learned Amici Curiae i.e. Mr. Shyam Divan, Mr. K.V. Vishwanathan, Mr. Vijay Hansaria and Mr. Gaurav Agrawal, who will go through the same and offer their views on the date fixed i.e. 30.7.2019..The Law Secretaries of each of the States and the Registrar Generals of each of the High Courts shall be personally present in Court on the date fixed i.e. 30.7.2019.”.Further, one of the Amicus Curiae, Vijay Hansaria, placed before the Court a report dealing with Central funding on the infrastructure for the subordinate judiciary. He also made some suggestions regarding the same..The Court directed Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to interact with the concerned officials of the Union of India and to place before the Court the views of the Centre with regard to the suggestions made by Hansaria..[Read Order]