Top court at full strength after elevation of 2 judges
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court is set to function at its full strength of 34 judges after a gap of 30 months with the Union government clearing the elevation of Gauhati high court chief justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Gujarat high court judge Jamshed Burjor Pardiwala to the top court.
The Union ministry of law and justice issued notifications formalising the appointments of justices Dhulia and Pardiwala on Saturday, in less than 48 hours after the Supreme Court collegium, led by Chief Justice of India NV Ramana recommended the names.
The appointments will take the tally of judges in the top court to the full sanctioned strength of 34, the highest ever since November 2019 when the Supreme Court worked with a full house.
The Supreme Court collegium, which comprises CJI Ramana, and justices Uday U Lalit, AM Khanwilkar, Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud and L Nageswara Rao, had in August 2021 cleared a record nine names for appointments in the top court, including justice BV Nagarathna from the Karnataka HC, who will go on to become the country’s first woman CJI in 2027.
Apart from justice Nagarathna, two more women judges, justices Hima Kohli and Bela M Trivedi, were also elevated to the Supreme Court following the collegium’s recommendation, taking the tally of women judges in the top court to four -- the highest ever.
The elevation of justice Dhulia will make him the second judge to come to the apex court from the Uttarakhand HC, while justice Parsignificance,” diwala will be the fourth member of the Parsi community to adorn the Supreme Court bench.
The last elevation of a judge from a minority community happened in February 2017 when justice S Abdul Nazeer was elevated. Justice Nariman, who retired in August 2021, was the last Parsi judge in the Supreme Court.
Former CJI RM Lodha told HT: “To have the full sanctioned strength of 34 judges is in fact a requirement. There is something amiss if you don’t have all 34 judges in the SC. It helps a lot in the cause of dispensation of justice when you have the apex court working with all 34 judges.”
Justice Lodha recounted that when he was the CJI in 2014 and the top court was working with all 34 judges, there was a five-judge constitution bench sitting all through the week to deal with issues of major significance in law.
“The SC should devote much time on subjects of constitutional importance and interpretation of laws. If you have the court working with its full sanctioned strength, it becomes feasible to have constitution benches of five or even seven judges decide issues of immense
he added.
On the speed with which the Centre cleared the two names, Justice Lodha said: “There are times when the executive sits on names for months together and then there are time when they clear it quickly. I feel the latter should be the norm. It is good that they have notified the appointments swiftly this time and I believe that this should apply to all the pending names for appointments.”
Justice Pardiwala is in line to become the CJI in May 2028 and will have a tenure of two years and three months. Justice Dhulia will retire in 2025.
Justice Dhulia hails from a remote village in Pauri Garhwal district of Uttarakhand. He was elevated as a judge of the Uttarakhand HC in November 2008, and later became the chief justice of the high court of Assam, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh in January 2021. At present, the Supreme Court does not have a judge from the Uttarakhand HC.
Justice Pardiwala is a fourthgeneration legal professional in the family of lawyers, who chiefly practised in the districts of Valsad and Navsari in Gujarat.
During the remaining part of the year, seven SC judges are set to retire. CJI Ramana is due to demit office on August 26, and is likely to be succeeded by the second most senior judge, justice Lalit.
Justice Lalit will be at the helm of affairs for less than two-and-ahalf months before he demits office on November 8. The others who will retire in 2022 are justices Khanwilkar (July 29), Rao (June 7), Indira Banerjee (September 23), Vineet Saran (May 10), and Hemant Gupta (October 16).