High Court Judge Strength Reduces To 8 Only

Srinagar—With Justices Ramalingam Sudhkar and Mohammad Yaqoob Mir take charge as chief Justices of Manipur and Meghalaya, the working bench strength of the state’s highest court has reduced to more than a half. 

The sanctioned strength of the J&K High Court was 14 but in the year 2014 it was increased to 17 Judges including Chief Justice. The sanctioned strength was increased keeping in view sharp rise in the work load during the past some years and with the aim of ensuring expeditious disposal of the cases for providing timely justice to the people.

However, at present the working strength of the J&K High Court is less than 50% of the sanctioned strength. Earlier, there were 10 Judges including acting Chief Justice but following the appointment of Justices Ramalingam Sudhkar and Mohammad Yaqoob Mir having been sworn-in  as chief Justices of Manipur and Meghalaya, the working strength has reduced to eight (including acting Chief Justice), which is more than 50% of the sanctioned strength of 17 Judges.

At present, there are only eight Judges—acting chief justice Alok Aradhe, Justice Ali Mohd Magrey, Justice Dhiraj Singh Thakur, Justice Tashi Rabstan, Justice Janak Raj Kotwal, Justice Sanjeev Kumar, Justice M K Hanjura and Justice Sanjay Kumar Gupta.

Hoping that the strength of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court would be raised to 25 soon, former Chief Justice Ahmad Justice Badar Durrez Ahmad in his farewell speech had opposed calling the Jammu and Kashmir High Court a small court, saying that its pendency rate was akin to the Delhi High Court where out of a sanctioned strength of 60, 38 judges were in place.

 “This (J&K) High Court is regarded as a small court because our sanctioned strength is 17, out of which only 10 judges are in place. But the work load is very heavy,” he said.

 “We have a combined pendency of about 62,000 cases which means that each judge has to shoulder the burden of 6,200 cases,” he had said.

 “In the Delhi High Court, the pendency is almost the same, 64,000 cases, but 38 judges are in place there out of a sanctioned strength of 60. So the Delhi HC has 1680 cases per judge,” he had said.

 “This implies that the judges of this court (J&K High Court) have to  hear approximately four times the number of cases handled by the High Court of Delhi,” he had said.      

Justice Ahmad praised his colleagues on the Srinagar and Jammu benches and members of the bar for the swift adoption of technology in the court room, saying that the introduction of paperless e-courts was the result of a huge collaborative effort.

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