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Cabinet approves increasing strength of SC judges from 31 to 33

NEW DELHI: The Union Cabinet on Wednesday cleared a Bill to increase the sanctioned strength of Supreme Court judges from 31 to 34, including the Chief Justice of India.

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Satya Prakash
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, July 31

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday cleared a Bill to increase the sanctioned strength of Supreme Court judges from 31 to 34, including the Chief Justice of India.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar said once Parliament gave approval to the Bill, the sanctioned strength of judges, including the CJI, will rise to 34 in the Supreme Court.

Recently, the Supreme Court managed to fill all the posts of judges after a gap of almost a decade. But despite that as of July 1, 2019 there were 59,695 cases pending in the top court.

The Cabinet’s decision to approve to increase the strength by three judges in the top court comes a month after Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking to increase the strength of judges in view of increasing pendency of cases in the top court.

The CJI had also written about increasing the retirement age of High Court judges from 62 to 65 years but the government didn’t act upon this suggestion.

The CJI had highlighted that due to the paucity of judges, the required number of Constitution Benches could not be set up.

"You would recall that way back in 1988, about three decades ago, the judge strength of the SC was increased from 18 to 26, and then again after two decades in 2009, it was increased to 31, including the CJI, to expedite disposal of cases to keep pace with the rate of institution," the CJI had written.

"I request you to kindly consider, on top priority, to augment the judge-strength in the SC appropriately so that it can function more efficiently and effectively as it will go a long way to attain ultimate goal of rendering timely justice to the litigant public," Justice Gogoi had written to the PM.

The original Constitution of 1950 envisaged a Supreme Court with eight judges, including the CJI, leaving it to Parliament to increase the sanctioned strength of judges.

Initially, the Supreme Court judges used to sit together to hear the cases presented before them. As the arrears of cases began to cumulate, Parliament increased the number of Judges from 8 in 1950 to 11 in 1956, 14 in 1960, 18 in 1978 and 26 in 1986.

After the increase in number of the judges, the Supreme Court judges began to sit in smaller Benches of two and three; and Constitution Benches of five or more judges to decide on important cases or to settle a difference of opinion among various high courts on a legal matter.

The Supreme Court of India came into existence on 26th January, 1950 and became functional after two days. The inauguration took place in the Chamber of Princes in the Parliament building where the Federal Court of India sat for 12 years between 1937 and 1950. 

 

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