The Supreme Court has threatened to initiate contempt proceedings against the state governments which have not nothing to act on its directive for close to six months now.According to a report in The Times of India, on November 13, 2014, the Supreme Court had directed all High Courts to initiate measure to ensure that they fill up the backlog in the appointments of judges to the lower courts. This is necessary to address a backlog of cases numbering up to three crore.In particular, the court vented its ire against the Karnataka High Court for having done nothing. A two-member bench headed by Chief Justice of India H L Dattu said: “In our view, the attitude of the HC appears to be contrary to what has been said by this court. We do not approve of the snail's pace at which the HC has acted in filling up the vacancies in so far as the district judges (direct recruitment) are concerned.”In an order dated April 28, the SC expressed apprehension that ordinary citizens would not respect its rulings given the lax attitude of the high courts, and directed that the registrar general of the Karnataka HC could be changed if necessary to carry out the work at hand.According to the TOI report, the bench also said: “This, in our opinion, is nothing but a deliberate and willful disobedience of the orders and directions issued by this court. If we do not get an appropriate reply from the state governments, we will not hesitate to initiate appropriate contempt proceedings against the officers authorities concerned.”