Collegium names KM Joseph, Indu Malhotra SC judges

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court collegium has recommended senior advocate Indu Malhotra and Uttarakhand chief justice KM Joseph be made judges of the country’s top court, a person familiar with the developments said on Thursday.

At a meeting on January 10, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and his four senior-most colleagues also promoted six judges as chief justices of high courts, including the one for Delhi.

Once the Centre clears the two appointments, the vacancies in the top court would come down to four. There are 25 judges in the Supreme Court against a sanctioned strength of 31. The appointments were cleared almost a week after the minister of state for law and justice PP Chaudhary told Parliament that the government had received no recommendation from the collegium to appoint judges to the top court.

Court vacancies have been a matter of bitter feud between the government and judiciary, who disagree on the procedure of appointment of the country’s top judges.

Malhotra, who specialises in arbitration, will be the first woman lawyer to be directly appointed to the Supreme Court.

In 2007, she was only the second woman to be appointed a senior advocate by the court, three decades after Leila Seth made history. Seth went to be the first woman to lead a high court in the country.

Justice R Banumatahi is the only woman judge in the Supreme Court at present.

Justice Joseph, who was on the bench that in 2016 quashed the imposition of President’s Rule in Uttarakhand, has been awaiting transfer to Andhra Pradesh for almost a year.

Appointments, transfers and promotions of high court and Supreme Court judges have to cleared by the Central government.

The government can return the recommendations for reconsideration just once.

With collegiums promoting six judges, the number of high courts with acting chief justices is now down to three.

Justice Aniruddha Bose from Calcutta would be the chief justice of Delhi high court, where justice Gita Mittal was teh acting chief justice, the source said.

Justice T Radhakrishnan would be moved to Andhra Pradesh high court from Chhattisgarh.

Gujarat high court’s judge Abhilasha Kumari, daughter of Congress leader Virbhadra Singh, would be the next chief justice of Manipur.

Justice Surya Kant of the Punjab and Haryana high court was picked to be the chief justice in the neighbouring Himachal Pradesh, the source said.

In a departure from the practice to appoint “outsiders” as chief justices, the collegium confirmed senior most judge of the Calcutta high court, justice J Bhattacharya, as the chief justice since he retires in September.

Similarly, justice Antony Dominic would be the Kerala high court chief justice till his retirement in May when he turns 62.

The collegium also moved justice Ajay Rastogi from Rajasthan to the Tripura high court, where he was likely to be the chief justice once the incumbent retires next month, the source said.

Justice PD Rajan from Kerala and justice Diwakar from Chhattisgarh have been moved to Allahabad on administrative grounds.

The government and judiciary have sparred repeatedly after the Supreme Court struck down the national judicial appointment commission brought in by the Modi government to replace the collegium system of the judges appointing judges.

The collegium system has often faced criticism for being opaque and promoting nepotism.