Collegium recommends Justices N.V. Anjaria, Vijay Bishnoi and A.S. Chandurkar to the Supreme Court, but no reasons stated for supersession of senior judges

TODAY, THE SUPREME COURT COLLEGIUM headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) B.R. Gavai decided to recommend the names of Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court N.V. Anjaria, Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court Vijay Bishnoi and judge of Bombay High Court Justice A.S. Chandurkar as judges of the Supreme Court of India.

The collegium, which also comprised Justices Surya Kant, Vikram Nath, J.K. Maheshwari and B.V. Nagarathna, met for the first time after Justice Gavai took over as CJI earlier this month.

Justice Anjaria is from the Gujarat High Court, while Justice Bishnoi and Justice Chandurkar are from the High Courts of Rajasthan and Bombay respectively.

Justice Anjaria stands at serial no.14 in the all-India seniority of high court judges, while Justices Bishnoi and Chandurkar stand at serial nos. 18 and 29.

The collegium statement issued earlier in the day does not specify reasons for giving priorities for these three names over the senior judges.

While Justices Anjaria and Chandurkar, if appointed to the Supreme Court, will retire in 2030, Justice Bishnoi, if appointed, will retire in 2029.

The appointment of Justice Chandurkar will be in supersession of Justice Nitin Madhukar Jamdar, who is currently functioning as Chief Justice of the Kerala High Court, and Justice Kalpathi Rajendran Shriram, currently serving as Chief Justice of Madras High Court. 

Justice Jamdar was appointed as a high court judge on January 23, 2012, and Justice Shriram on June 21, 2013. Justice Chandurkar was also appointed on June 21, 2013. However, Justice Shriram was senior to Justice Chandurkar in the order of appointment.

It is not clear from the statement of the collegium as to what factor weighed with the collegium to supersede Justice Jamdar.

This time also the collegium did not recommend any woman judge to the Supreme Court despite there being senior women judges in the high courts. At present, Justice Nagarathna is the sole woman judge in the Supreme Court, with Justice Bela Trivedi retiring on June 9.

The last batch of three women judges were appointed to the Supreme Court in 2021. Since then no appointment of women judges has been made to the Supreme Court.

While recommending names for the Supreme Court, the collegium also takes into account the representation of High Courts that are not represented or are inadequately represented in the Supreme Court. 

It is not clear at present as to why the High Courts of Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, and  Orissa, which have significant strength of judges, continue to remain unrepresented in the Supreme Court despite the availability of judges from these high courts. At the same time, there have been more than one judge from some high courts.

The High Courts of Jharkhand,  Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, and Orissa have not had judges in the Supreme Court since 2016, 2017 and 2018 respectively when Justices M.Y. Iqbal, CJI T.S. Thakur and CJI Dipak Misra retired respectively.