{"id":44761,"date":"2025-01-31T02:46:25","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T21:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=44761"},"modified":"2025-10-04T12:14:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T06:44:11","slug":"supreme-court-relaxes-conditions-for-ad-hoc-judge-appointments-in-high-courts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/supreme-court-relaxes-conditions-for-ad-hoc-judge-appointments-in-high-courts\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Relaxes Conditions for Ad Hoc Judge Appointments in High Courts"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>What\u2019s in Today\u2019s article?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Ad hoc judges in High Courts Latest News<\/li>\n<li>Article 224A: Appointment of Retired Judges in High Courts<\/li>\n<li>Lok Prahari versus Union of India<\/li>\n<li>Condition for Appointment of ad hoc Judges to HCs relaxed<\/li>\n<li>Modification of Earlier Conditions<\/li>\n<li>Ad hoc judges in High Courts FAQs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Ad hoc judges in High Courts Latest News<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The Supreme Court has eased its previous condition for appointing <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/appointment-of-retired-high-court-judges-on-ad-hoc-basis-to-tackle-case-backlog\/\" target=\"_blank\">ad hoc judges<\/a> in High Courts to clear pending criminal cases.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>It ruled that ad hoc appointments can be made even if vacancies do not exceed 20% of the sanctioned strength.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The 20% condition was imposed by the Supreme Court in an April 2021 judgment in the\u00a0<strong>Lok Prahari versus Union of India<\/strong>\u00a0case.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Article 224A: Appointment of Retired Judges in High Courts<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The Chief Justice of a High Court, with the <strong>President\u2019s prior consent<\/strong>, can request a retired judge of that or any other High Court to serve as a judge in that state\u2019s High Court.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Such judges will have <strong>the same jurisdiction, powers, and privileges<\/strong> as regular judges but will not be considered permanent judges.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Their allowances will be determined by the <strong>President\u2019s order<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Lok Prahari versus Union of India<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>In <i>Lok Prahari v. Union of India<\/i> (2021), the Supreme Court invoked Article 224-A of the Constitution to allow the appointment of ad hoc judges in High Courts to address the backlog of cases.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>It set guidelines ensuring such appointments occur only after efforts to fill regular vacancies.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The Chief Justice of a High Court may exercise this discretion if:\u00a0\n<ul>\n<li>vacancies exceed 20% of the sanctioned strength,\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>cases in a category have been pending for over five years,\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>over 10% of pending cases are older than five years, or\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>the disposal rate is lower than the rate of new case filings.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Condition for Appointment of ad hoc Judges to HCs relaxed<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The Supreme Court has allowed High Courts across India to appoint retired judges on an ad-hoc basis to address the backlog of criminal cases.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>These judges will only hear criminal appeals in benches headed by a sitting High Court judge.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Guidelines for Appointment<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>A special bench comprising Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and Justices BR Gavai and Surya Kant ruled that:\n<ul>\n<li>Chief Justices of High Courts can recommend retired judges for appointment.<\/li>\n<li>Each High Court may appoint <strong>2 to 5 ad-hoc judges<\/strong>, not exceeding <strong>10% of its sanctioned strength<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Modification of Earlier Conditions<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>The Supreme Court modified and kept in abeyance certain conditions set in its April 2021 ruling by then CJI SA Bobde, including:<\/li>\n<li>The earlier requirement that vacancies should not exceed <strong>20% of sanctioned strength<\/strong> before appointing ad-hoc judges.<\/li>\n<li>The restriction that ad-hoc judges <strong>could sit separately on benches<\/strong> to deal with cases.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>No Fixed Timeline for Appointments<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>The Supreme Court declined a request to set a fixed timeline for appointing ad-hoc judges but emphasized that the process should begin immediately.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Addressing the Pendency Crisis<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>The ruling was prompted by the acute backlog of cases.\u00a0\n<ul>\n<li>The High Courts have over 60 lakh cases pending, of which nearly 20 lakh are criminal appeals.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The 80% working strength condition from the 2021 ruling had prevented ad-hoc appointments in several High Courts, such as Allahabad HC (80 judges out of 160 sanctioned strength).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Ad hoc judges in High Courts FAQs<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Q1.<\/strong> What is Article 127 of the Constitution?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ans.<\/strong> Article 127 allows the Chief Justice of India to appoint ad hoc Supreme Court judges when there is a lack of quorum.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q2.<\/strong> What are Articles 126 and 127?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ans. <\/strong>Article 126 allows the appointment of an acting Chief Justice of India, while Article 127 deals with appointing ad hoc SC judges.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q3. <\/strong>Can a civil judge become a Supreme Court judge?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ans.<\/strong> Yes, if promoted through the judicial hierarchy and appointed by the President based on recommendations from the collegium.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q4.<\/strong> What is suo moto cognizance?<\/p>\n<p><strong>An<\/strong>s. It is when a court takes up a case on its own, without a petition being filed, to ensure justice.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q5<\/strong>. Who appoints retired judges?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ans.<\/strong> The Chief Justice of a High Court can request a retired judge\u2019s appointment with the President\u2019s prior consent under Article 224A.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/explained-sci-tech\/isro-100th-launch-significance-9805666\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">IE<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/sci-tech\/isro-successfully-launches-nvs-02-satellite\/article69153254.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">TH<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/pib.gov.in\/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2097343\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">PIB<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SC eases ad hoc judge appointment rules for HCs, modifying 2021 conditions. Retired judges can now assist in clearing criminal case backlog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":44762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-44761","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}