CJI Bobde Made 126 High Court Appointment Recommendations

In this post we statistically look at the recommendations for appointments and elevations made by the collegium during CJI Bobde’s term.

CJI Bobde made a total of 126 appointment recommendations and 109 elevation recommendations to the High Courts. He also made 8 recommendations for elevation to the position of Chief Justice in the High Courts of Bombay, Jammu & Kashmir, Manipur, Orissa, Telangana, Madras and Gauhati.

The Allahabad, Bombay and Calcutta High Courts have seen the most appointments come their way as they have 3 of the 5 highest sanctioned strengths amongst Indian High Courts (160, 94 and 72 respectively).

Notably, despite the vacancies in the High Courts of Andhra Pradesh, Delhi and Rajasthan being close to 50% of the sanctioned strength (54% in the case of Rajasthan) with a total of 74 vacancies between them (of a total 411 at the time), no recommendations to the Centre were made for appointments in those courts.

Patna which has 32 seats vacant out of a possible 53, has seen no recommendations for appointment or elevation of judges. We can see neither Uttarakhand nor Sikkim being recommended judges either. However, according to the data prior to CJI Bobde’s retirement Uttarakhand had only four vacancies while Sikkim had none (Sikkim’s sanctioned strength is also the lowest at 3 judges).