As reported by PTI, Ranjan Gogoi, CJ has written to the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi in respect to:
- Increase in the number of Supreme Court Judges, i.e. Increase in the strength
- Retirement Age of the High Court Judges to be 65 Years
These suggestions have been placed in regard to clearing of the backlog cases. Further stating that there is a pendency of 58,669 cases in the Supreme Court and the number was increasing due to the filing of more fresh cases.
“I request you to kindly consider, on top priority, to augment the judge-strength in the SC appropriately so that it can function more efficiently and effectively as it will go a long way to attain ultimate goal of rendering timely justice to the litigant public.”
Another suggestion was to increase the retirement age of the Judges from 62 to 65 years in the High Court’s, as:
“One of the prime reasons why we are not able to contain the ever-growing pendency is shortage of HC judges. At present, 399 posts, or 37 per cent of sanctioned judge-strength, are vacant. The existing vacancies need to be filled immediately. However, despite best efforts put in by all stakeholders, it has not been possible to appoint judges to bring the working judge-strength anywhere close to the sanctioned judge-strength”.
“This, in turn, would help in improving the vacancy position and consequently reducing pendency of cases. This would also be in consonance with the (repeated) recommendations made by parliamentary standing committees.”
[Source: PTI]