Judges of the Supreme Court: a Regional Analysis
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5 NOVEMBER 2016 JUDGES OF THE SUPREME COURT: A REGIONAL ANALYSIS The Supreme Court of India started Indian Constitution, inter-state disputes or functioning on January 28, 1950 from the important questions of law; it is also the final Chamber of Princes in the Parliament House, forum for many statutory appeals, deciding the seat of the erstwhile Federal Court. individual disputes on facts. Inaugurated just two days after India’s The judges of the Supreme Court of India Constitution was adopted and the nation became a sovereign, democratic republic, the have played a significant role in shaping Supreme Court shifted to its present building Indian democracy, the Indian Constitution at Tilak Marg in 1958. itself and the umpteen laws which govern the country. Commencing with eight judges, the Besides being the highest Constitutional court strength of the Court was steadily raised and which can be moved directly under Article 32 currently stands at 31. against the violation of fundamental rights, the Supreme Court is also the highest appellate court of the country. In this compilation, I bring out the data As it stands today, the Supreme Court of India regarding the parent High Courts of the is not just deciding and interpreting the judges of the Supreme Court. The parent High (C) BAR & BENCH !1 5 NOVEMBER 2016 Court of a judge is the High Court to which judges. Out of these two hundred and twenty- the concerned judge was first elevated to the four judges, forty-three were appointed as the Bench. Chief Justice of India. The judges have been divided into two Barring seven judges, who were directly categories for the purpose of this piece – elevated from the Bar, the remaining two puisne judges and Chief Justice of India. hundred and seventeen judges were appointed Sitting judges who will become CJI in the from the 24 High Courts across the country. future are counted under the head of puisne The seven judges who were elevated from the judge and not categorised as CJI. Bar are SM Sikri, SC Roy, Kuldip Singh, N Santosh Hegde, Rohinton Fali Nariman, UU The Unwritten Quota Lalit and L Nageswara Rao. An unwritten quota system is prevalent in the Another noteworthy fact is that out of the two Supreme Court as per which at least one judge hundred and twenty-four judges, there have from each High Court has to be part of the been only six women judges till date; apex court's bench. The column sheds some none of them becoming the CJI. light on this aspect, as well as the region-wise distribution of judges. The analysis also The first woman judge of the Supreme Court includes classification post-1993 and was Justice Fatima Beevi. Interestingly, she pre-1993; it was in the year 1993 that the was appointed to the Supreme Court around Collegium system of appointing judges came six months after her retirement from the into existence. Kerala High Court. The primary source of all the information pertaining to past and present judges has been So who leads the tables? derived largely from the information available on the Supreme Court's website. This information is rarely presented in a The Bombay High Court has contributed the standardised format; and what further maximum number of judges to the Supreme complicates matters is the fact that during the Court. Sixteen puisne judges and seven CJIs first few years of its existence, the Supreme of the Supreme Court have had Bombay as Court judges came from different parts of their parent High Court taking the total undivided India. number to twenty-three. Many of them had started their career in High Courts which are either currently in Pakistan, The Calcutta High Court comes next with or no longer in existence. twenty-two judges followed by Madras High Attributing or associating such a judge to his Court with twenty-one and the Allahabad or her parent High Court was, thus, a slight High Court with twenty. challenge at times. Together, these four High Courts account for Judges - The Complete eighty-six of the two hundred and twenty-four Picture Supreme Court judges or nearly 38% of all apex court judges so far. In the 66 years of its existence, the Supreme Court has had two hundred and twenty-four (C) BAR & BENCH !2 5 NOVEMBER 2016 Six High Courts have never had a judge in the Of the judges elevated from the Bar, only one Supreme Court – Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, has become the CJI till date – Justice SM Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura and Sikkim. All Sikri. of these courts though were established in the last two decades. As mentioned earlier, India has never had a woman Chief Justice. Justice Ruma Pal came The two Himalayan States of Himachal the closest to achieving that feat but missed Pradesh and Uttarakhand have contributed out due to a bad stroke of luck. one judge each to the apex court. Justice Pal and Justice YK Sabharwal were to be sworn in on the same day but the The Chief Justices of India communication to Justice Pal reached her late thus, delaying her trip to Delhi. The Bombay High Court wins this department too with seven out of the forty-three CJIs High Court CJI’s having Bombay as their parent High Court. Bombay 7 Calcutta comes next with six followed by Calcutta 6 High Judges CJI’s Judges + Madras 3 Court CJI’s Allahabad 5 Bombay 16 7 23 Patna 2 Calcutta 16 6 22 Kerala 1 Madras 18 3 21 This meant that Justice Sabharwal was sworn Allahaba 15 5 20 in a few hours before Justice Pal. d Had Justice Pal been sworn in along with Patna 15 2 17 Justice Sabharwal, Pal would have pipped Kerala 13 1 14 Sabharwal for the post of CJI on account of the fact that her name was higher in the Allahabad with five. The Karnataka High alphabetical order. But it was not to be! Court has had four judges who have adorned the post of CJI. Collegium - Before & After Apart from the six High Courts which have not contributed a single judge to the Supreme Court, Andhra Pradesh & Telangana, Gauhati, An analysis of data before and after the Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand High Second Judge's verdict also reveals some Courts have never had a CJI in Supreme interesting facts. For instance, the Delhi High Court. court has been the biggest gainer post the Collegium case. One of the CJIs, Mehr Chand Mahajan, was first elevated to the Lahore High Court, Before the Collegium came into existence, and later became a judge of the East Punjab there were two judges from the Delhi High High Court. This particular High Court went Court in the Supreme Court but the number on to become what is now the Punjab & increased to ten after the coming into Haryana High Court. existence of Collegium. (C) BAR & BENCH !3 5 NOVEMBER 2016 Gauhati has also witnessed an increase in strength at the Supreme Court going up from three to six. Calcutta however has, however, seen a reduction in numbers after Collegium case, with its tally reducing from fourteen to eight. A region-wise analysis A grouping of High Courts into five regions reveals some interesting statistics. The north- eastern region has contributed only nine judges to the Supreme Court; no judge from the north-east has become the CJI yet. All the judges from the north-east have come from Gauhati High Court though three of the 5 High Courts in the north-east were established only in March of 2013. (C) BAR & BENCH !4 5 NOVEMBER 2016 Region-wise analysis The seven high courts in the north have contributed a total of fifty-eight judges to the Supreme Court including eleven CJIs. The four High Courts in the south have contributed fifty-seven judges in all. (C) BAR & BENCH !5 5 NOVEMBER 2016 The two western High Courts have thirty-three Supreme Court judges, including nine CJI’s, to their credit. The eastern region with four High Courts has had forty-seven Supreme Court judges. (C) BAR & BENCH !6 5 NOVEMBER 2016 The two High Courts in central India have had thirteen judges make it to the Supreme Court of India. The north-eastern region has contributed only nine judges to the Supreme Court; no judge from the north-east has become the CJI yet. Justice Ranjan Gogoi from Gauhati High Court is slated to be the first CJI from north-east as well as the Gauhati High Court. (C) BAR & BENCH !7 5 NOVEMBER 2016 Equal representation? represented in the concerned [High] Court or every State is represented in the Supreme The Collegium tries to ensure that there is at Court is a flawed system. least one judge from every High Court in the Supreme Court. This has been a subject The only relevant criteria should be merit. matter of debate and difference of opinion Why is it that you need X number of Reddy amongst the members of the Bar itself. judges or Y number of Kamma judges or Z number of Muslim judges? How does this matter?” Senior Advocate KV Viswanathan feels Despite these, certain facts are very obvious that diversity in from the above data. The marginal Supreme Court is representation that the north-eastern region essential in a vast has had in Supreme Court is one of them. It country like India. has had only 9 judges so far which comes to around 4 percent of the total Supreme Court He says: judges. However, that might not paint the full picture “Experts in fields like criminal law and since the north-eastern states house less than taxation also have to be considered.