PTI, NEW DELHI: Since assuming office a little over a month ago, Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi has held six crucial collegium meetings for filling up of 29 vacancies in high courts and four in the Supreme Court to tackle the huge backlog of pendency in the higher judiciary.
The collegium also did not shy away from invoking provisions of Memorandum of Procedure to appoint a judge of the same high court as Chief Justice of parent high courts of Bombay and Calcutta.
The CJI Gogoi-led collegium, which also includes justices Madan B Lokur, Kurian Joseph, A K Sikri and S A Bobde, on October 30, recommended elevation of four chief justices of Madhya Pradesh, Patna, Gujarat and Tripura high courts as apex court judges and the names were cleared by the government within 48 hours, creating a history of its kind.
Justice Gogoi had succeeded Justice Dipak Misra as the CJI on October 3 and he will have a tenure till November 17, 2019.
The collegium on October 9, invoked a rarely used provision of Memorandum of Procedure which provides for elevation of a puisne judge as Chief Justice in his own high court if he has one year or less to retire.
The three-judges collegium for high court (CJI, justices Lokur and Joseph) appointed Justice D K Gupta and Justice N H Patil as Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court and Bombay High Court respectively.
Gupta is slated to retire in December 2018 while Patil’s tenure ends in April 2019.
