Thread by @barandbench

Supreme Court special bench of CJI SA Bobde, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Surya Kant hears a plea seeking appointment of additional judges in High Courts.
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Senior Adv Vikas Singh: Senior lawyers who belong to Jharkhand etc can and part of the SCBA can perform better in their parent high courtd and also address the vacancy

CJI to AG KK Venugopal: Justice Kaul has prepared a chart about vacancies, vacancies in parent high courts and proposals pending with Govt and collegium. 189 proposals are pending. We will hand this chart to you. Please study this chart and we will hear this matter soon

Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul: 5 months, Collegium cleared 9 judges and 6 are pending with govt. Out of that 4 are govt counsels.

Justice Kaul to Centre: We need the update on pending names as on January 29. Suppose you have reservations and send back names to us then we can reiterate. But if you don't give comments for 5 months on collegium recommendation, it is a matter of great concern. #SupremeCourt

Supreme Court: You need to see the bottlenecks and iron them out.

Attorney General submits data on the pendency of cases.

Justice Kaul: Pendency from 150 was brought down to 104 in December last year. But there are many which are pending for phenomenal amount of time.

CJI: we are not asking a response on matters which we have deferred. The main purpose of the proceedings is to speed up the pendency of appointment of such judges to high courts and is pending with the govt. We all need to see a timeline to achieve this target

CJI: whenever facts are to be stated about individual judges we are not going to take names. That's why we wanted to deal with this on administrative side. Everytime we get a spate of complaints whenever we recommend a name.

Senior Adv Singh: For transparency sake it needs to be on judicial side

CJI: on judicial or administrative, there is no lack of transparency. There may be lack of publicity but not transparency

Senior Adv Vikas Singh: the process has to start, names recommended 6 months ago has not been appointed till now. Why should process not be completed before the retirement age of a judge approaches. Look at Odisha its still pending.

Justice SK Kaul: within the age profile sometimes there is a problem in appointment of such judges as some lawyers being considered are practicing.

Singh: some people are practicing on criminal or tax side who does not appear before the CJ. But there needs to be system for collecting these names

Justice Kaul: Thats why we have recommended names from these fields too

CJI: everyone here has a common goal.

Senior Adv Vikas Singh: ultimately this institution is for litigants and if litigants don't get Justice then...

CJI: we have spent 25 years in this system, we know what is this institution is for. Leave it to us. We will do it right.
#SupremeCourt

Justice Kaul tells Delhi: Your vacancies are a big problem

Adv Gautam Narayan: Yes we have 31 vacancies.

Supreme Court: we need to know why Delhi names are pending for 5 months. No recommendations in past 1.5 years. How can that happen?

CJI: we will hear this case next week. By then the high courts have to respond. Our priority might be vacancies which have not been addressed we will look into that.

CJI: We cannot always ask for a timeline, we will ask HCs about issues they face. Some we will address on judicial side and some on administrative side.

Justice Surya Kant: please find about Centre that some HCs sent recommendations last year like Bombay in May, 2020, Allahabad in June., 2020, etc What is your timeline to respond to these recommendations of judges appointment??
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Justice Kant: Government has taken more than a year to respond and not yet. You say something pending with intelligence bureau and some Chief Minister has not responded. But we want to know your (Centre) timeline

Justice Kaul: we need to put the houses in order.

Matter adjourned for two weeks.

#SupremeCourt
#judgesappointment

Matter of great concern if Collegium recommendations remain pending with government for five months: Supreme Court

#SupremeCourt #Collegium

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