Judiciary Watch: Nine Calcutta HC judges made permanent, MP gets seven additional judges & more

It has been a relatively slow past few weeks when it comes to judicial appointments in the country. The biggest change was witnessed in the Calcutta High Court, where nine additional judges were made permanent this month. The High Court now has 38 permanent judges and one additional judge..The judges are AK Chakraborty, MM Banerjee, Mohd. Mumtaz Khan, Sankar Acharyya, Mir Dara Sheko, DP Dey, Asha Arora, Siddhartha Chattopadhyay, and Shivakant Prasad JJ. The High Court also saw the appointment of Amitabha Chatterjee as an additional judge..At the Madhya Pradesh High Court, seven have been appointed as additional judges, taking its working strength to 39 as against 14 vacancies. The new judges are RK Dubey, Anjuli Palo, Virender Singh, SK Awasthi, VK Shukla, Gurpal Singh Ahluwalia and Subodh Abhyankar..The High Courts of Jharkhand and Patna are now headed by acting Chief Justices after the retirement of Justice Virender Singh and Justice IA Ansari. PK Mohanty and Hemant Gupta JJ. will now serve as ACJ in their stead respectively..The total number of vacancies across the 24 high courts now stands at 461, three less than last month’s figures. These numbers are expected to improve in the coming months, after the Supreme Court pulled up the Centre for its lackadaisical attitude towards hastening the process of appointment of judges..Chief Justice of India TS Thakur had pointed out the state of affairs at the Allahabad and Karnataka High Courts in particular; these high courts have more than half their posts lying vacant..Perhaps as a direct consequence of the apex court’s criticism, the Centre recently cleared ten names for appointment to the Delhi and Gauhati High Courts..Three high court judges are expected to retire this month. They are Ranjana Pandya J., additional judge of the Allahabad High Court, Vinod Prasad J. of the Orissa High Court, and Girish Chandra Gupta, Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court..At the end of this month, we could well see another woman judge heading a high court as a consequence of the last retirement. Justice NN Mhatre is the next senior-most judge at the Calcutta High Court..At the Supreme Court, the number of vacancies will go up to six, with the impending retirement of Justice Anil R Dave this month..Below is a list of vacancies in the higher judiciary as of November 1: