NEW DELHI: A record 24 judges have been appointed to Allahabad high court in one order notified by law ministry Friday, bringing down the vacancies of judges in the country’s largest high court from 74 to 50 against a sanctioned strength of 160 judges.Ten of the new appointees are advocates who have been elevated as judges while 14 are judicial officers promoted on HC bench. The law ministry also notified appointment of two judges for Himachal Pradesh HC and three for Karnataka HC among 29 judges appointed on Friday.The new appointees in Allahabad HC include advocates Vivek Saran, Vivek Kumar Singh, Garima Prashad, Sudhanshu Chauhan, AbdheshChaudhary, Swarupama Chaturvedi, Siddharth Nandan, Kunal Ravi Singh, Indrajeet Shukla and Satya Veer Singh.The 14 judicial officers appointed as judges in Allahabad HC include Ajay Kumar-II, Chawan Prakash, Divesh Chandra Samant, Prashant Mishra-I, Tarun Saxena, Rajeev Bharti, Padam Narain Mishra, Lakshmi Kant Shukla, Jai Prakash Tiwari, Devendra Singh-I, Sanjiv Kumar, Vani Ranjan Agrawal, Achal Sachdev and Babita Rani.In another order, the law ministry notified appointment of three advocates: Geetha Kadaba Bharatharaja Setty, Borkatte Muralidhara Pai and Tyagaraja Narayan Inavally, to be additional judges of the Karnataka HC, in that order of seniority, for a period of two years. Two other advocates – Jiya Lal Bhardwaj and Romesh Verma – were appointed as judges of Himachal Pradesh HC with effect from the date they assumed charge.The 25 high courts in India at present have 330 vacancies of judges. Against a sanctioned strength of 1,122 judges, the total working strength at present is 792 judges. Many of the HC collegiums have not recommended any names for more than 200 vacancies, according to ministry sources.Among those recommended to the Centre, many are at the stage of background verification by Centre or with SC collegium for their approval.
