Even though the deadlock between the collegium and the Centre over judicial appointments seems to have been broken, the permanent Benches of the Karnataka High Court continue to suffer from an acute shortage of judges.

The Bench at Kalaburagi is especially short of personnel, with only 3 judges sitting presently.

Earlier this month, it was reported that the Centre had agreed to sign off on 44 appointments to various high courts. However, only 2 of these appointments are to the Karnataka High Court, a court that is functioning at less than half its capacity.

With the retirement of Justice AN Venugopala Gowda this month, the number of judges currently sitting at the high court is 29, out of a sanctioned strength of 62. As per the latest sitting lists, 20 of these judges sit at the Principal Bench at Bangalore.

Only 6 judges – Justices AS Bopanna, Prabhakara Sastry, RB Budihal, KN Phaneendra, K Somashekar and Sreenivas Harish Kumar – sit at the Dharwad Bench. A mere 3 judges – BV Nagarathna, BA Patil and G Narendar JJ – sit at the Kalaburagi Bench.

And the fact that pendency figures at these two Benches have shot up over the years doesn’t bode too well. According to the Hindu, over the last nine years, pendency of cases has increased from 7,500 to 24,000 at the Kalaburagi Bench, and from 22,000 to 60,000 at the Dharwad Bench.

The Benches at Dharwad and Kalaburagi (then Gulbarga) were inaugurated in July 2008. They were both made Permanent Benches in 2013.

Lawyers in Bangalore are more than aware of this situation. Last year, a memorandum endorsed by a number of Senior Advocates urged Chief Justice SK Mukherjee to consider invoking Article 224 A of the Constitution as a stop-gap measure. That provision calls for the appointment of retired judges to serve on an ad-hoc basis.