Lower court judges to get 30% interim hike in salary

NEW DELHI: A pay panel has proposed a 30% hike in the basic salary of lower court judges as an “interim relief”, a statement issued on Monday read. The salaries of these judicial officers were last increased in 2010.

An interim report submitted by the Second National Judicial Pay Commission (SNJP) to the Supreme Court recommended the hike for nearly 20,000 subordinate court judges across the country. The enhanced pay is expected to be disbursed with effect from January 1, 2016.

The commission said it will submit the final report “in the next six months”.

On January 30, judges of the Supreme Court and 24 high courts received a hike of over 2.5 times in salaries and allowances after Parliament passed a law to this effect.

However, officers with the Delhi State Judicial Services would not be entitled to the hikes because they are already drawing salaries in accordance with pay scales recommended by the 7th Pay Commission.

The recommendation of the Supreme Court-appointed SNJP may come up before an apex court bench in the coming days.

Eight years ago, the subordinate judiciary received a threefold jump in pay from salaries fixed in 1999. It was applied retrospectively from January 1, 2006.

The current entry-level salary for a junior civil judge is around ₹45,000 per month, while a senior judge gets around ₹80,000.

“Given that there are 28% vacancies in the lower judiciary on an average, it remains to be seen if the pay hike will encourage more lawyers to join the subordinate judiciary,” said Sumathi Chandrashekharan of the VIDHI Centre for Legal Policy, adding that the increment was long overdue.

The commission said it will release a consultation paper in the next few days to seek answers from the registrar generals of 24 high courts as well as all state government to examine the methods, work environments in courts and various allowances and benefits made available to judicial officers, in addition to their salaries.