Hyderabad: A stand-off between the Supreme Court Collegium and the Union government over the finalisation of the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) for selection of judges for the Supreme Court and High Courts and the delay in bifurcation of the common High Court have led to the shortage of judges at the Hyderabad High Court.
As many as 37 vacancies of judges remained unfilled in the Hyderabad High Court till date. Though the Acting Chief Justice Dilip B. Bhosale of the Hyderabad HC was relieved from his position on July 29 after his elevation as Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court, neither was the Chief Justice appointed to the Hyderabad HC nor was the senior-most judge given charge as the Acting CJ as on August 1.
According sources, as per convention whenever an HC Chief Justice either retires or is transferred, the next senior-most judge will be made the Acting Chief Justice, in case there is a delay in the appointment of a regular chief justice. The sources pointed out that this was the first time there was no head for the Hyderabad HC.
According to the department of justice as on July 1, 2016, the number of vacancies of judges in High Courts was 470 and as many as 36 vacancies of judges remained unfilled in the High Court till date. Though the sanctio-ned strength of the HC is 61, it has only 24 judges, who are delivering justice to seven crore people in the two Telugu states.
The appointment of judges to higher courts got stalled after the Supreme Court in October 2015 annulled the National Judicial Appointments Com-mission Act, which sought to scrap the 22-year-old collegium system for judicial appointments and vested the power with the National Jud-icial Appointments Commission. The collegium is an informal grouping comprising of four senior-most judges of the Supreme Court and the CJI.
After restoring the collegium system, which allows a panel of senior-most judges appointing their new colleagues, a Constitu-tion bench headed by Justice J.S. Khehar had directed the Centre to frame a new Memorandum of Pro-cedure (MoP) in consultation with the Ch-ief Justice of India.
MoP details the procedure to be followed during the judicial appointments. While the Central government had formulated MoP, the Supreme Court sent it back for reconsideration as it gave power to the government to reject a person recommended by the collegium.
Though the government had a right to reject a candidate’s name under the earlier procedure, the executive would have had no go but to appointment the person, if the collegium reiterated the name.
