A week after the Supreme Court highlighted the precarious situation in the High Courts of Meghalaya and Manipur with regard to vacancies in judges' posts, the Centre has appointed chief justices to the two courts.
The Centre has notified the appointment of Justice Ramalingam Sudhakar as chief justice of the Manipur High Court, and Justice Mohammad Yaqoob Mir as chief justice of the Meghalaya High Court.
Sudhakar is a judge of the Madras High Court, presently functioning as judge in the Jammu & Kashmir High Court. Mir is a judge of the Jammu & Kashmir High Court.
The situation in the Meghalaya High Court was particularly bad as it had only one judge, while the sanctioned strength of judges for the High Court is four. Manipur High Court, which has a sanctioned strength of five judges, had only two judges prior to Friday's appointment.
The Supreme Court collegium had recommended the names for appointment as chief justices of the two High Courts in April this year. The collegium, in its recommendation, highlighted the urgency for making an appointment to the Meghalaya High Court since it was functioning with only one judge.
Last week, a Supreme Court Bench comprising Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta had, while hearing a case that had come from Manipur, expressed anguish over non-appointment of judges to the High Courts. The bench had made its views—with regard to the delay on part of the government in clearing names for appointment to the higher courts—known to Attorney General K.K. Venugopal.
The Supreme Court had particularly highlighted the situation in the High Courts in the northeastern states of Meghalaya and Manipur. It pointed out that petitioners to the two courts were forced to approach the Supreme Court to get their cases referred to the Gauhati High Court if they wanted a review of the respective High Court's order.
The petition that the Supreme Court was hearing was filed by a resident of Manipur who had lost his case filed in the Manipur High Court. A single-judge bench had delivered the verdict. The petitioner wanted to challenge the order, which was not possible in the Manipur High Court since it had only two judges, and one of them had delivered the verdict. His plea before the Supreme Court was that he be allowed to challenge the order before the Gauhati High Court.
“People of the northeast are suffering. What are they supposed to do? Should they approach the Supreme Court to get their cases transferred to other High Courts and spend money to hire lawyers there?” the two-judge bench had said.