November 01, 2018:
On Thursday, Supreme Court pulled up the Delhi High Court for delaying the recruitment process of 200 judges in the Courts.
Top Court warned if the High Court can’t fill the vacancies, “we will take over that task from you and we will make it a centralized process.”
Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi had earlier stressed on the need to fill in the vacancies in the lower judiciary, addressing the challenge of the pendency of cases.
He said,“Accused in criminal cases are getting hearing after serving their sentence and parties in civil disputes are getting judgments after two-three generations. It is a serious problem, but it is not too difficult and can be resolved. I have a plan and will soon unfold it.”
Taking suo motu cognizance of the issue, a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi & Justice S K Kaul, on October 23, said information collected by its registry showed a total of 5,133 vacancies in the lower judiciary, adding that the process to fill 4,180 posts was in progress.
It added that there was a mismatch in the numbers as the information with the registry also showed that the recruitment process was yet to start in 1,324 posts out of the 5,133 vacancies.
Terming the existence of such a large number of vacancies as “wholly unacceptable”, the court asked the registry to take suo motu writ petition on this.
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