‘Chief Justices must speed up process of hiring district judges’

NEW DELHI: Justice Ranjan Gogoi on Saturday called upon Chief Justices of all the high courts to speed up the process of filling up over 5,000 vacancies in district courts that are reeling under the burden of 2.6 crore cases.

The Supreme Court judge cautioned that if posts are not filled up, then the Centre would take it as an opportunity to step in and push its agenda to have a centralised system to recruit judges at the trial court level. At present judges in subordinate judiciary are selected through an exam conducted by the respective HC and the state government.

“There are 5094 vacancies in trial courts today. Allahabad tops the list with 1343. Bihar has 825 vacancies and Madhya Pradesh has 748.

If we are unable to fill up then I do not blame the government for embarking upon the idea to centralize the recruitment system,” Justice Gogoi said, addressing a gathering of judges at the valedictory session of a two-day conference on “National Initiative to Reduce Pendency and Delay in Judicial System.” Justice Gogoi will take over as the Chief Justice of India in October after the retirement of Justice Dipak Misra.

The three-tier process followed to hire district court judges should ideally take 320 days but it’s not happening, he said. He pointed out how Delhi took 762 days to appoint judges for trial court, while Jammu and Kashmir took 900 days.