Supreme Court Report Reveals 31% Vacancy in High Court Judge Positions and 21% in District Judiciary

According to a report issued by the Supreme Court of India’s Centre for Research and Planning, 492 of the 650 judges who were appointed to high courts during the previous five years were from the general category.

The participation of marginalized groups in the judiciary was also addressed in the report “State of the Judiciary: A report on Infrastructure, Budgeting, Human Resources and ICT,” which was posted on the SC website on December 15.

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It was mentioned that the Indian Constitution’s Articles 15 and 16 permit the national and state governments to set aside positions in government for members of specific categories, including Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS).

Reservation is made for the aforementioned groups when hiring new judges for the district judiciary, according to the report.

After that, it looked at the progress of hiring Junior Division Civil Judges from the reserved category in the six states with the most open positions: Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.

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The report stated that 766 vacancies for the reserved category—which includes SCs, STs, OBCs, EWS, and others, as applicable to each state—were advertised for the 1,389 seats offered for the Civil Judge (Junior Division) exam in these states.

Nevertheless, the analysis showed that in these six states, 37.5% of the reserved category seats were still unoccupied. Sixty-three percent of the available seats in the Civil Judge (Junior Division) recruiting exam were not filled by the time these vacancies were announced.

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Additionally, the research discovered that 142 (84.5%) of the 168 seats set aside for the ST category remained unfilled in these states.

The report stated that “sincere action is needed to fill unfilled vacancies, especially from the reserved category, at a time when the judiciary needs maximum judge strength to cut down on the mounting arrears.”