SC Collegium Recommends Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra As AP CJ

New Delhi: Thirteen high courts in the country will get new Chief Justices (CJs) as the Supreme Court collegium headed by CJI N V Ramana has recommended to the Centre eight names for elevation and transfer of five sitting CJs to other high courts.

Calcutta High Court CJ Justice Rajesh Bindal would now become the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court if the Centre assents to the recommendation.

The other seven judges whose elevation as CJs have been recommended by the collegium which also comprises Justices U U Lalit and A M Khanwilkar include

Justices Ranjit V More, Satish Chandra Sharma, Prakash Srivastava, R V Malimath, Ritu Raj Awasthi, Aravind Kumar and Prashant Kumar Mishra for elevation as CJ of the high courts of Meghalaya, Telangana, Calcutta, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh respectively.

In another statement, uploaded on the web site, the apex court provided the list of five Chief Justices who have been transferred to other high courts.

A A Kureshi, CJ of Tripura High Court, has been recommended to become CJ of the Rajsathan High Court, while Justice Indrajit Mahanty, the CJ of Rajasthan High Court would go to Tripura HC as the CJ.

Chief Justice Mohammad Rafiq of Madhya Pradesh High Court has been recommended to head the Himachal Pradesh HC as the CJ, while Chief Justice Biswanath Somadder  of Meghalaya High Court would be transferred in the same capacity to the Sikkim High Court.

Chief Justice A K Goswami of the Andhra Pradesh High Court has been recommended to become the CJ of the Chhattisgarh High Court, the statement said.

As per the third statement uploaded on the apex court's web site, the collegium in its meeting held on September 16, has recommended “transfer/re-transfer” 17 high court judges.

They are Justices Jaswant Singh, Sabina, T S Sivagnanam, Sanjaya Kumar Mishra, M M Shrivastava, Soumen Sen, Ahsanuddin Amanullah, Ujjal Bhuyan, Paresh R Upadhyay, M S S Ramachandra Rao, Arindam Sinha, A M Badar, Yashwant Varma, Vivek Agarwal, Chandra Dhari Singh, Anoop Chitkara and Ravi Nath Tilhari.

The collegium headed by CJI NV Ramana has been taking steps by recommending names to fill up a large number of vacancies in higher judiciary in the country.

The 25 high courts in the country have a combined sanctioned strength of 1,080 judges and on May 1, 2021, they were functioning with 420 judges only.