The panel comprising the CJI and Justices SK Kaul, SA Nazeer, KM Joseph, MR Shah and Sanjiv Khanna also agreed to recommend the appointment of Justice N Kotiswar Singh as Chief Justice of J&K HC and Justice Sanjay Mishra as CJ of Jharkhand HC as well as the transfer of Judge K Vinod Chandran as a judge of Gauhati HC.
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Justice Kotiswar Singh whose parent HC is Manipur and is currently in Gauhati HC will be the first Justice from North East to run J&K HC. Judge Sanjay Mishra’s parent HC is from Orissa and is currently posted to Uttarakhand HC. Justice Chandran is likely to take over as Chief Justice of Gauhati HC after the retirement of incumbent Chief Justice Rashmin Manharbhai Chhaya on 11 January.
Justice Karol, who served as Chief Justice of Tripura HC and Patna HC cumulatively for more than three years, has his father HC in Himachal Pradesh, a state which had not been represented in the SC since Justice Deepak Gupta’s retirement in May 2020.
As Justice Nazeer is due to retire on Jan 4, the collegium decided on Muslim representation in the highest court through Justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah, the most senior justice in Patna HC after Chief Justice Karol.
Judge Sanjay Kumar, CJ of Manipur HC is from Telangana HC. Justice Mithal whose parent HC is Allahabad is currently the head of Rajasthan HC. Another Allahabad HC Justice, Justice Manoj Misra was also selected by the collegium for appointment as a SC Justice. If the appointments of Justices Mithal and Misra get the approval of the Union Government, then the SC will have four Justices of Allahabad HC, the existing two being Justices Krishna Murari and Vikram Nath.
The CS, with a sanctioned strength of 34, currently has 28 justices. Of them, four are from Bombay HC: CJI Chandrachud and judges BR Gavai, AS Oka and Dipankar Datta. Similarly, four are from Delhi HC: Judges SK Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna, SR Bhat and Hima Kohli. There are three Gujarat HC judges in SC: Judges MR Shah, Bela M Trivedi and JB Pardiwala. Karnataka HC also has three representations in SC in Justices Nazeer, AS Bopanna and BV Nagarathna. This means that four HCs represent 50% of the 28 existing SC judges.
Conversely, several states have had no representation in SC for a long time: Odisha, Jammu and Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and all northeastern states (excluding Assam). With the collegium recommending the appointment of Justice Kotiswar Singh as CJ of J&K, there is a possibility that he will be elevated to SC in about a year and become the first from Manipur to become a SC justice.
