THE APPOINTMENT of eight High Court Chief Justices on September 5, 2026 came amid controversy over the functioning of the Collegium. Justice Sandeep Mehta had written to Chief Justice of India (‘CJI’) Surya Kant on August 2, 10 and 17, alleging maladministration, corruption, nepotism and favoritism by Rajasthan’s then Acting Chief Justice, Sanjeev Prakash Sharma.
In a fourth letter dated August 30, he reportedly complained of inaction on the earlier letters. The CJI, in response, stated that the concerns were under examination and that Justice Sharma deserved a fair hearing. Justice Sharma, meanwhile, denied all the allegations and attributed them to animosity. Irrespective of its merit, the episode brought anxious attention back to the Supreme Court Collegium (‘SCC’).
Justice Sharma had assumed acting charge on September 28, 2025 following the retirement of Chief Justice K.R. Shriram. The SCC had earlier declined his request for repatriation to Rajasthan on health grounds but transferred him to the Rajasthan High Court in May 2025 without disclosing the reasons. He thereafter continued as Acting Chief Justice for nearly a year. Justice Sanjay Kumar Agrawal was recommended as the regular Chief Justice only on August 31, 2026, 337 days after Sharma assumed charge, and took oath on September 7. Rajasthan thus remained without a regular Chief Justice for 344 days, almost the entire period preceding the Collegium’s recommendation.
1. The First Question: Departure from the MoP
The first question concerns the apparent departure from the Memorandum of Procedure (‘MoP’). As a matter of policy, a Chief Justice is appointed from outside the High Court. Paragraph 3 therefore provides that puisne judges are “ordinarily” considered for appointment as Chief Justice of other High Courts, while Paragraph 4 carves out the only exception to this general rule. A puisne judge who has one year or less to retire when his turn for elevation arrives may be considered for appointment as Chief Justice of his own High Court, provided a vacancy is due to arise there within that period. When Justice Shriram retired, Justice Sharma was Rajasthan’s senior-most puisne judge and was due to retire on September 26, 2026, slightly less than a year later. It is not publicly known whether the SCC considered invoking this permissive exception in his case. It nevertheless means that neither Sharma’s remaining tenure nor the outside-Chief-Justice policy explains an acting arrangement lasting almost a year. If he was not to be appointed, another successor should have been identified in time.
