Supreme Court collegium clears 24 names

The Supreme Court collegium, headed by the Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur, is understood to have cleared 24 new names for the appointment of judges to the Madras high court. This includes 15 lawyers and nine subordinate judges.

The lawyers in the list are: Bhavani Subbaroyan, A.D. Jagdish Chandra, Sathia Chandran, G.R. Swaminathan, Abdul Quddhose, M. Dhandapani, P.D. Audikesavalu, V. Parthiban, R. Subrama-niam, M. Govindaraj, M. Sundar, R. Sureshkumar, Nisha Banu, M.S. Ramesh and Anita Sumanth and S.M. Subramanaiam. The nine district judges are: R.M.T. Teeka Raman, N. Sathishkumar, N. Sesha-sayee, T. Ravindran, S. Baskaran, P. Velmur-ugan, G. Jayachandran, C.V. Karthikeyan and Basheer Ahmed.

The Madras high court collegium sent a list of 30 names, 19 from the bar and 11 from among district judges in February. The names were not processed for a long time as the memorandum of procedure for the appointment of judges could not be finalised by the government. However, even as the MoP was being discussed with the Chief Justice of India, the law ministry processed the names and sent them to the collegium for its consideration.

The collegium, at its meeting on July 21, is understood to have cleared 24 names and rejected six others, which includes four lawyers and two district judges.

The present strength of judges in the high court is 38, with 37 vacancies to be filled. With the present recommendations, the strength will increase to 62 and 13 vacancies will still remain.