New Delhi: Two district judges from Himachal Pradesh have sought the Supreme Court’s intervention after they were excluded from a list of names recommended for judgeship at the state high court.
Chirag Bhanu Singh and Arvind Kumar Malhotra, two of the state’s most senior district judges, have claimed that the collegium of the Himachal Pradesh High Court — the judicial equivalent of an appointment panel — has ignored the SC Collegium’s suggestion that they should be reconsidered whenever there is a proposal to fill up vacancies in the court.
The vacancies in question come under the quota meant for trial court judges. In its recommendation on 4 January this year, the SC Collegium — a body comprising three of the court’s most senior judges, including the Chief Justice of India — had asked the HC Collegium to reconsider the names of the two judges for elevation.
This is also reflected in the Union Ministry of Law and Justice’s letter sent to the Himachal Pradesh HC chief justice on 16 January. This letter invited suggestions from the chief justice to fill vacancies against the service judges’ quota in the HC.
In their petition before the Supreme Court, the two judges said that the HC Collegium had sent its proposal without considering their names — a move they claim would raise questions on their unblemished careers. They also said that the two officers whose names were recommended were junior to them. The latter two officers were elevated to the high court on 28 July last year.
Taking note of their grievance, a Supreme Court bench led by Justice Hrishikesh Roy Monday issued notices to the Himachal Pradesh HC registrar general and sought information on whether the two judicial officers were considered before the fresh proposal was forwarded. The registrar general’s response has to be placed before the bench before 15 July.
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‘Unblemished record’
Appointments to the HC are made under two categories: from the Bar — that is, lawyers — and from the district judiciary.
The appointment procedure for both groups is the same, with the HC Collegium sending its recommendations to the SC Collegium and the Union law ministry. Once it receives a formal proposal from the ministry, the SC Collegium initiates its own deliberations and eventually sends the latter shortlisted names.
In their petition, the two judges said that the HC Collegium had originally recommended their names for promotion in December 2022. However, through a resolution on 12 July last year, the top court’s collegium deferred its decision on their names, although it cleared others for appointment.
This January, the Collegium sent back the two names to the HC for reconsideration.
In their petition, the two judges have said that the names finalised for elevation were appointed with less than a year’s tenure in the HC before reaching retirement age, and that, according to the standard operating procedure for the higher judiciary, they should have had at least 1.5 years.
Before taking over as the district judge of Bilaspur, 53-year-old Chirag Bhanu Singh served as registrar of the Supreme Court twice, being in office for five years.
After joining the state’s judiciary in 2007, he was also posted on deputation as principal secretary (law) with the Himachal Pradesh government.
If appointed to the HC now, he would have a long tenure of nine years and would go on to become among the most senior judges of the court, second only to the then chief justice.
Meanwhile, 52-year-old Malhotra joined the judiciary in 2008. During his 16-year career, he served as the HC’s registrar (vigilance) for five years and has also been the court’s registrar general — the top official on the administrative side, reporting directly to the court’s chief justice.
Appearing for the two judges, senior advocate Arvind Datar and advocate Bina Madhavan told the bench that not including their names in the recommendation would cause them “serious prejudice to the expectations of the petitioners who have a blemish-less record as serving judicial officers”.
The counsels took the bench through the sequence of events that was followed by the SC Collegium’s resolution this year, saying that although the suitability of a candidate is not a justiciable issue, eligibility can be a subject matter of judicial review.
The two judges should be considered for elevation and the list now with the SC Collegium should be sent back to the HC for fresh deliberations, the counsels argued.
When asked whether the HC collegium had asked for the judgments authored by the two judges, Datar and Madhavan replied in the negative.
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