Following his transfer from the Madhya Pradesh High Court, Justice Atul Sreedharan took oath as a judge of the Allahabad High Court on Tuesday.
Allahabad High Court Chief Justice Arun Bhansali administered the oath of office to Justice Sreedharan.
Justice Sreedharan was transferred to the Allahabad High Court on October 18, days after the Supreme Court Collegium acceded to the government's request to not transfer him to Chhattisgarh High Court, as recommended earlier.
His transfer, particularly in light of the government’s interference, raised eyebrows. The transfer came just few months after Justice Sreedharan was transferred back to his parent High Court in Madhya Pradesh from the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court.
Justice Sreedharan started his law career in the chamber of Senior Advocate Gopal Subramanium in 1992 at Delhi and assisted him till 1997 in several civil and criminal matters before the Supreme Court, Delhi High Court and trial courts.
He practiced independently in Delhi from 1997 to 2000 before shifting to Indore in 2001 where he continued independent practice.
He also served as Panel Advocate and Government Advocate for the State of Madhya Pradesh before the Indore Bench of the High Court.
He was appointed as an additional judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court on April 7, 2016, and was made a permanent judge on March 17, 2018.
Justice Sreedharan was part of the High Court Collegium in Madhya Pradesh and would have been in a similar position a the Chhattisgarh High Court. However, in Allahabad, he will be at number seven in seniority.
He had been transferred from Madhya Pradesh to Jammu and Kashmir in April 2023 after the judge himself had sought the transfer on grounds of his daughter entering law practice in Madhya Pradesh. He had been transferred back to Madhya Pradesh in March this year.
Speaking at a farewell reference in Jabalpur, Justice Sreedharan had recently said that transfers are an incident of service and he was excited and looking forward to serving at Allahabad High Court, the largest High Court in the country.
However, he had also quoted Urdu poet Rahat Indori to comment on his transfers.
"The only thing permanent in universe is impermanence and I would like to look at the transfers in the words of Rahat Indori, the pride of Indore, who said: Jo aaj sahib-e-masnad hai kal nahi honge (those who are sitting on the throne today, will not be there tomorrow), kiraaye daar hain zaati makaan thodi hai (they are renters, it is not their house)," Justice Sreedharan had said.