Office-bearers of the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (BCTNP) met Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju in New Delhi on Thursday and impressed upon him the need to fill vacancies of judges in the Madras High Court.
They submitted a memorandum to him with a request to ensure that candidates from all class and categories, including the minorities and women, were given adequate representation while filling the posts.
The memorandum said the High Court now had 45 permanent judges and 15 Additional Judges as against its sanctioned strength of 75 judges. However, 12 out of the 60 judges were about to retire from service within a year. Therefore, the Bar Council requested the Minister to speed up the process of identifying suitable candidates for being elevated as High Court judges and ensure social diversity in the higher judiciary. The council pointed out that 5.77 lakh cases were pending in the Madras High Court and of them 1.02 lakh cases were pending for more than a decade. It said the rate of pendency was the fourth highest in the country and that the numbers were continuously rising despite best efforts by judges to clear the backlog. The Bar Council cited the exponential increase in filing of new cases as the reason for the docket explosion. Therefore, it pleaded for expedient steps to fill the vacancies. Member of Parliament P. Wilson, Bar Council of India Vice-Chairman S. Prabakaran, BCTNP chairman P.S. Amalraj and its members including K. Balu, J. Selvama and G. Thalaimutharasu were part of the delegation which met the Minister.
