The Supreme Court Collegium headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud has in the first year of his tenure as top judge, which began in November 2022, recommended 14 judges to the apex court.
Thirteen of them were either Chief Justices or senior puisne judges of High Courts and one, senior advocate K.V. Viswanathan, was a direct elevation from the Supreme Court Bar.
The Collegium resolutions spell out the criteria for considering judges for the Supreme Court. Seniority in their respective parent High Courts and in the All India High Court Judges List was the foremost. The Justice Chandrachud Collegium recommendations show that, besides seniority, merit, performance and integrity of the judges in the zone of consideration were also under scrutiny.
The Collegium has highlighted diversity and inclusion in its appointments to the Supreme Court. These two factors include recommendation of judges from High Courts which are either not represented or are inadequately represented in the Supreme Court, appointment of persons from marginalised and backward segments of society, gender diversity and representation of minorities.
However, the Chandrachud Collegium is yet to appoint a woman judge to the Supreme Court. There are only three women judges currently serving in the Supreme Court, which is functioning at its sanctioned judicial strength of 34 judges. Justices Hima Kohli, B.V. Nagarathna and Bela M. Trivedi were appointed on the same day, on August 31, 2021.
Five separate Collegium resolutions, from December 2022, cover the Chandrachud Collegium’s recommendations for judicial appointments to the Supreme Court.
The latest one, on November 6, saw the recommendation of Delhi, Rajasthan and Gauhati Chief Justices Satish Chandra Sharma, Augustine George Masih and Sandeep Mehta, respectively.
Justice Sharma is second in the All India seniority list of High Court judges and the seniormost among judges from his parent High Court of Madhya Pradesh. Mr. Justice Masih is seventh in the All India list and seniormost among the judges of his parent High Court of Punjab and Haryana. There were already two judges from the Punjab and Haryana High Court serving in the Supreme Court. The Collegium however noted that Justice Masih belonged to a minority community. Though Justice Mehta was 23rd in the All India list, he was the seniormost judge from Rajasthan High Court, his parent court. Besides, the Collegium reasoned that the apex court had no representation from Rajasthan on the Bench.
Regional representation
Seniority and regional representation played prominent roles in the Collegium’s recommendation of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and S. Venkatanarayana Bhatti on July 5. Justice Bhuyan was at the time the seniormost judge of his parent High Court of Gauhati and Justice Bhatti was the seniormost in his parent High Court of Andhra Pradesh. The fact that the Supreme Court Bench did not have a representation from the High Court of Andhra Pradesh since August 2022 too weighed in favour of recommending Justice Bhatti.
The Collegium recommendation of Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra on May 16 also saw regional representation play a dominant part. Justice Mishra, though ranked 21st in the All India list, was from Chhattisgarh. At the time, the Collegium reasoned that the High Court of Chhattisgarh was not represented in the apex court Bench.
The year’s first Collegium recommendation, on January 31, however, only partly followed the seniority criterion. The resolution of the Collegium to appoint then Allahabad Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal was “unanimous”. Justice Bindal was second in the All India seniority list of High Court judges and the seniormost at the time among judges from his parent High Court of Punjab and Haryana, which at the time was not adequately represented in the apex court.
However, one of the five Collegium judges, Justice (now retired) K.M. Joseph, had “expressed his reservations” about the recommendation of then Gujarat High Court Chief Justice Aravind Kumar along with Justice Bindal on January 31. Justice Joseph had said that Justice Kumar’s name could be “considered at a later stage”. Justice Kumar was at the time 26th in the All India list and number two in seniority among judges hailing from the Karnataka High Court. There were already two judges in the Supreme Court from the Karnataka High Court. The Collegium resolution merely mentioned that it was “conscious” of these facts.
The Chandrachud Collegium had recommended Justices Bindal and Kumar even as an earlier December 13, 2022 recommendation to appoint Justices Pankaj Mithal, Sanjay Karol, P.V. Sanjay Kumar, Ahsanuddin Amanullah and Manoj Misra was yet to be notified by the government at the time. The Collegium had specifically made it clear that the seniority of these five earlier recommended judges should be maintained, and it was when they were appointed on February 6, 2023.
