SC takes note of huge lower court vacancies

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 22

Worried over huge vacancies in subordinate courts across India, the Supreme Court on Monday took suo motu cognizance of the problem and asked High Courts to submit reports by October 31 on recruitment processes undertaken by them, the schedule followed, measures needed to expedite it and infrastructural requirements.

According to official figures, 5,133 of the 22,036 posts of subordinate court judge were vacant and information collected by the Supreme Court Registry from different High Courts indicated that recruitment process to fill 4,180 posts was underway.

But 1,324 of the 5,133 vacancies were yet to be subjected to any recruitment process, indicating an obvious mismatch of the data received from High Courts — which was also being looked into by the top court’s Registry.

“The existence of vacancies to the extent indicated is wholly unacceptable. The Registry of this court is, therefore, directed to register a suo motu writ petition,” a Bench of Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and SK Kaul ordered.

This is the second PIL the top court is entertaining on the issue. Earlier, the top court had on May 9, 2017, converted a letter by Union Justice Secretary to Supreme Court Secretary General Ravindra Maithani highlighting the problem of unfilled judicial vacancies in subordinate courts into a PIL in order to find a solution to the problem.

Last year, a centralised system of examination for selection of subordinate court judges was proposed, under which a candidate would be able to apply for more than one state if he/she fulfilled the eligibility requirements of the states he/she wanted to be considered for. 

But that was vehemently opposed by TMC-ruled West Bengal. BJP governments of Madhya Pradesh and Assam had taken diametrically opposite stands on the proposed centralised mechanism for appointment of subordinate court judges across India.

On Monday, the top court also appointed four advocates as amicus curiae to assist it in the matter. Senior counsel Shyam Divan will assist the court in dealing with judicial vacancies in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and the North-East, while senior advocate KV Vishwanathan will do the same for Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Kerala.

Similarly, senior counsel Vijay Hansaria will assist the court as amicus curiae on Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Bihar and Punjab and Haryana, while advocate Gaurav Agrawal has been asked to assist it in dealing with judicial vacancies in Rajasthan, Sikkim, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tripura and Uttarakhand.

The Bench posted the matter for hearing on November 1 along with a 12-year-old matter on filling vacancies. 

Figure mismatch

• Data collected from HCs indicated 5,133 of 22,036 posts of lower court judge were vacant and recruitment process was on to fill 4,180 
• But 1,324 of 5,133 vacancies were yet to be subjected to recruitment process, indicating a mismatch of data received from HCs