The Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court recently noted that an affidavit filed by Maharashtra's Law and Judiciary Department showed that nearly 60% of judicial posts in the State are vacant.

The judge reportedly called such a shortage "glaring" and made a call for urgent steps to fill the vacancies. What is more glaring, however, is how little has changed in judicial vacancies over the last decade.

There can be many reasons behind the high level of vacancies, ranging from supply-side factors - such as a lack of well-qualified candidates or an inability to acquire and retain them - to demand-side factors, such as budgetary constraints, lack of infrastructure to support an increased number of judges, or failures in ensuring timely appointment cycles. In any case, what we need is sustained attention to the issue.

Appointments to the district judiciary are made by state governments (through the support of public service commissions) and High Courts to vacant positions in the sanctioned strength of judges. Without going into the age-old issue of the method to be used to calculate judge strength and the merits of each method proposed in the past, appointing authorities known one thing - a sanctioned strength of judges in each state which can be filled.

As per data from annual reports of the Supreme Court over the last decade, as collated by JALDI’s Judicial Vacancy portal, the percentage of vacancies in India’s district judiciary between 2015 and 2025 remained fairly constant between 20-29%. The slight increase in judicial vacancies in the recent past is due to a noticeable increase in sanctioned strength between 2023 and 2024, without a corresponding increase in the working strength.

The increase in the overall sanctioned strength is largely due to an increased sanctioned strength in Maharashtra from 2,442 posts in 2022-23 to 5,471 posts in 2023-24.

The increase by over 3,000 posts could be attributed to the suggestion of the National Court Management Systems Committee (NCMS). In 2024, the NCMS cited lack of adequate data to scientifically calculate required judge strength and recommended, in the interim, that a judge-to-population ratio of 30 judges per million population be used. The use of Maharashtra’s data as an example to calculate the required sanctioned strength for the State could have prompted it to increase its sanctioned strength in line with the recommendation.

Without straying into the merits and demerits of such an increase in the sanctioned strength, the question remains as to whose shoulder the responsibility of filling vacancies lies on. While the answer can go back and forth between governments and public service commissions on the one side and High Courts on the other side, the answer is both. The extent to which responsibility lies on any institution, however, varies across states depending on which institution conducts the selection process for the two tiers of direct recruitments - district judges (selected from the Bar) and civil judges (junior division).

While conducting the selection process for direct recruitment is one of these institutions' responsibilities - albeit a challenging one fraught with unpredictable cycles and administrative delays - introspection ought to be their other responsibility. The State of the Judiciary report in 2023 examined the last completed recruitment cycles in 24 states and found that 71% of the seats advertised for direct recruitment as district judges remained vacant. In four states, no candidates qualified for the main examination. In another state, none qualified for the viva voce. Corresponding statistics regarding unfilled vacancies in recruitments to the post of civil judge (junior division) were not made available.

What is clear is that attention is also needed to analyse why the recruitment process fails. Do the examinations test the right skills? Are the questions based on knowledge and aptitude that are most relevant in practice? Should there be a balance between what candidates are expected to know before joining the service and what they can be trained on by judicial academies? Why are the most suitable candidates not drawn to the service? Such introspection must come from the leadership of these institutions to drive reform and reforms must be made in a consultative and collaborative manner to ensure that they withstand the tests of time and change in leadership. The issue of judicial vacancies cannot be left to updates on the status quo, progress reports, or plans of action prompted by litigation. The issue deserves greater, sustained and systemic attention, especially when it has remained glaring for so long.

Shruthi Naik is a Senior Resident Fellow and Lead of the JALDI initiative at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.