New Delhi: The Allahabad High Court Bar Association has written a strongly worded letter to the President, questioning the appointment and suitability of five retired high court judges recommended for ad-hoc positions by the Supreme Court collegium.
The letter, seen by ThePrint, says that the collegium’s proposal for appointment of the retired judges is “inexplicable and has been cause for consternation to the legal fraternity in the state of UP”.
Earlier this month, the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant-led appointment panel had cleared the names of Justices Mohd. Faiz Alam Khan, Mohd. Aslam, Syed Aftab Husain Rizvi, Renu Agarwal, and Jyotsna Sharma as ad-hoc judges for a two-year term.
The Collegium resolution cited Article 224A of the Constitution, which allows a High Court Chief Justice, with the President’s prior consent, to request any High Court judge to “sit and act as a judge of the high court”. This can be done only with the consent of the retired judge.
In a letter written on 5 February, the Association alleged that the names recommended by the Collegium “fail to inspire confidence in the ability of the recommended persons to clear pendency of cases”.
“A search on the net shows a minuscule number of cases having been decided by at least four of five judges during their tenure of almost two years as high court judges,” it says.
The letter says that a search on the legal search engine Manupatra shows that Justice Mohd. Aslam has delivered 46 judgments during his tenure from March 2021 to January 2023, while Justice Renu Agarwal delivered only 73 judgments during her tenure from August 2022 to June 2024.
It claims that Justice Jyotsana Sharma has delivered only 93 judgments during her tenure between August 2022 and January 2025, while Justice Syed Aftab Hussain Rizvi has delivered only 151 judgments during his tenure between March 2021 and April 2025.
In comparison, it says, Justice Mohd. Faiz Alam Khan, who served a longer tenure from November 2018 to January 2025, has delivered 395 judgments during his tenure.
“Several judges who have retired in between 2024-25 would be younger and more fit for effective disposal of cases,” the letter asserts, alleging that the exercise of invoking Article 224A was done without consulting stakeholders, especially the Bar.
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‘Innings complete’
The letter alleges that the invoking of Article 224A of the Constitution by the Supreme Court collegium is not in line with the provision, because the request for appointment in Article 224A “appears to be the domain of the Chief Justice of the High Court with the previous consent of the President”.
Additionally, the letter alleges that the five judges appear to have been “picked out of the blue from amongst a pool of retired judges unaccompanied by any exercise of choosing the best from the available pool of retired judges”.
The vacancies in different high courts, it says, should be filled up from amongst eligible lawyers or judicial officers through due exercise of procedure. The appointment of five judges from the pool of retired judges, it says, “merely deprives eligible persons of the legal fraternity from being appointed to a sensitive constitutional post while the post is filled up by retired High Court judges whose innings in the system are already complete”.
The letter asserts that assuming that such a necessity arises to invoke Article 224A, then the “logical choice of retired judges to be appointed would be to appoint those who had a record of fast and effective disposal of cases”.
The association goes on to register its protest against the five judges recommended to be appointed, asserting that the names “fail to inspire confidence in the ability of the recommended persons to clear pendency of cases”.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)