Chief Justice says no to hurry in filling Hyderabad High Court vacancies

Hyderabad: Chief Justice Thottathil B. Radhakrishnan of the Hyderabad High Court on Monday made it clear that he will not take a decision in a hurry with regard to the filling up vacancies of judges of the High Court. While dealing with a PIL seeking a direction to the authorities to fill up the vacancies of judges, the Chief Justice, along with Justice S.V. Bhatt, said that decisions taken in a hurry always have have an adverse impact.

City advocate S. Rajkumar had moved the PIL seeking to direct the Centre and governments of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana state to take steps to fill up the vacancies. The CJ asked the petitioner whether he desires to select advocates from the bar in the appointment as judges without assessing their competence. Maintaining that there are several contagious issues have to be looked into before selecting the advocates to appoint them as judges, the CJ reminded that he assumed the charge just a month ago and also the efforts are on to fill up the vacancies.

While agreeing with the argument of the petitioner that the existing judges are overloaded due to non-filling of vacancies, the Chief Justice said that they have to wait for some more time to complete the appointment process.

Mr Raj Kumar submitted to the court that the sanctioned strength of the judges of the High Court is 61 while there are only 29 judges with the remaining 32 posts lying vacant for the past several months. This has led to an increase in the number of pending cases. While asking the petitioner whether had has any formula for the appointment of judges , the CJ said that seeking frequent adjournment of cases by the advocates is also one of the reasons for the pendency of the cases.The bench adjourned the case for a month.