ON Thursday, March 6, 2025, the Supreme Court Collegium led by Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna recommended the appointment of Justice Joymalya Bagchi, judge in the Calcutta High Court, to the Supreme Court.
The Collegium which also comprises Justices B.R. Gavai, Surya Kant, Abhay S. Oka, and Vikram Nath, took into consideration the fact that at present, there is only one judge from the Calcutta High Court in the Supreme Court - Justice Dipankar Datta.
The Collegium also noted that since the retirement of Chief Justice Altamas Kabir on July 18, 2013, there had not been any Chief Justice of India from the High Court at Calcutta.
If appointed to the Supreme Court, Justice Bagchi will go on to become the Chief Justice of India after the retirement of Justice K.V. Viswanathan on May 25, 2031. Justice Bagchi would have a tenure of more than six years as a judge of the Supreme Court and a tenure of five months as Chief Justice of India.
He was appointed as a judge of the High Court at Calcutta on June 27, 2011. On January 4, 2021, he was transferred to the High Court of Andhra Pradesh. On November 8, 2021, he was repatriated to the High Court at Calcutta and has been functioning there since.
Justice Bagchi's appointment will lead to the supersession of as many as ten judges, including his immediate seniors from the Calcutta High Court, Justices Biswanath Sommader, Indra Prasanna Mukerji, Harish Tandon and Soumen Sen. Justices Sommader and Mukerji are presently functioning as chief justices at the High Courts of Sikkim and Meghalaya respectively. They were appointed as judges of the Calcutta High Court in 2006 and 2009, respectively.
Justice Tandon was appointed in 2010 has been recommended to be appointed as Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court. The position had remained vacant since the retirement of Orissa High Court’s former Chief Justice Chakradhari Sharan Singh on 19 January 2025.
The CJI Khanna-led collegium will now be able to make only one more recommendation if it chooses to before April 13, 2025. If Justice Bagchi is appointed, the Court will be one short of its full strength of 34 judges. CJI Khanna is slated to retire on May 13, 2025. As a matter of practice, the CJI does not hold collegium meetings to recommend appointments in the remaining one month of their tenure in the office. The baton is passed on to the successor.
It is not the first time when the collegium has made a recommendation to appoint a junior judge as the Supreme Court judge. The Collegium has been doing so to diversify regional, gender, caste and religion-based representation in the Supreme Court.
The similarities with Justice Khanna’s appointment to the top Court
Interestingly, Chief Justice Khanna, himself, was appointed to the Supreme Court by superseding many judges. The Collegium, which comprised the then Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices A.K. Sikri, S.A. Bobde, N.V. Ramana and Arun Mishra, had made a recommendation to appoint Justice Khanna as judge of the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Khanna had also superseded three judges in his parent High Court in Delhi - Justices Pradeep Nandrajog, Gita Mittal and S. Ravindra Bhat. Justice Bhat went on to become a Supreme Court judge on September 23, 2019, nearly eight months after Justice Khanna’s elevation to the top Court.
The then-sitting judge of the Supreme Court Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul had written to Justice Gogoi objecting to the supersession of Justice Pradeep Nandrajog, who was senior to Justice Khanna.
In fact, the Collegium, on December 12, 2018, had recommended the appointment of Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice Pradeep Nandarajog to the Supreme Court. At that time, Justice Madan B. Lokur was part of the Collegium. However, for reasons not clear, the copy of the resolution was not uploaded on the Court's website.
After the retirement of Justice Lokur in December 2018, the Collegium, which now consisted of Justice Arun Mishra, came out with a resolution (available in public) to elevate Justice Dinesh Maheshwari and Sanjiv Khanna. The reasons for dropping the names of Justice Menon and Nandrajog were not mentioned in that resolution.
The resolution, which came out on January 10, 2019, merely mentioned that the Collegium had decided to take a ‘fresh look’ at the December 12 decision after the winter break.
Justice Gogoi, in his autobiography, states that he proposed the appointment of Justice Khanna, since, if he were elevated at that point in time, he would go on to become Chief Justice of India for six months. He further writes that the Delhi High Court would have a CJI in 2024 when Justice Khanna is due to become CJI after a gap of almost twenty years. The last CJI from the Delhi High Court was Justice Yogesh Kumar Sabharwal who demitted office in 2006.
Later, speaking at an event organised by The Leaflet, Justice Lokur confirmed that a resolution to recommend the names of Justices Menon and Nandrajog was indeed signed and that he was disappointed that the Collegium decision of December 12 had not been uploaded.
