The Supreme Court Collegium has approved elevation of 12 advocates and judicial officers as judges in the Telangana High Court. The Collegium at its meeting on Tuesday, February 1, approved the proposal for elevation of seven advocates and five judicial officers as judges. They include four women.
The advocates who will be elevated as judges are Kasoju Surendhar alias K Surender, Chada Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy, Surepalli Nanda, Mummineni Sudheer Kumar, Juvvadi Sridevi alias Kuchadi Sridevi, Mirza Safiullah Baig and Natcharaju Shravan Kumar Venkat. The judicial officers who will get the elevation are G Anupama Chakravarthy, MG Priyadarshini, Sambasivarao Naidu, A Santosh Reddy and Dr D Nagarajun.
This will take the number of judges in Telangana High Court to 30 including Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma. The High Court will still have 12 vacancies. In June 2021, the bench strength of Telangana High Court, which has over 2.3 lakh pending cases, increased from 24 to 42 judges.
Seven judges including four women were appointed by the President of India in October last year. It was in 2020 that the names of the seven judges were proposed by the Collegium of Telangana High Court to the Supreme Court under judicial quota. The Supreme Court Collegium headed by Chief Justice NV Ramana gave his consent in August 2021 and forwarded the names to the Union government.
Earlier in the last week of January, the Supreme Court Collegium recommended that Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari be appointed as the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court. The collegium, which held deliberations on December 14, 2021 and January 29, 2022, also recommended 17 names for appointment as judges in Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa high courts. Of the 17 names for judges in the three High Courts, the collegium has decided to recommend names of seven advocates as judges of the Andhra Pradesh High Court.
With PTI inputs