President Pratibha Patil has appointed nine Additional Judges of the Madras High Court – Justices R. S. Ramanathan, B. Rajendran, D. Hari Paranthaman, T. Selvam, C.S. Karnan, N. Kirubakaran, M.M. Sundresh, T.S. Sivagnanam and M. Duraiswamy – as permanent Judges of the court.
They will be sworn in on Tuesday evening.
The tenure of four Additional Judges – Justice T. Raja, R. Mala, Aruna Jagadeesan and G.M. Akbar Ali – has been extended for two more years . They will be sworn in on Thursday morning.
The tenure of all the 13 Additional Judges was to end on March 30.
Though the High Court had made recommendations for making Additional Judges permanent in the existing vacancies in September 2010, due to the procedural delay at various stages, it took six months for the Centre to issue the notification making nine judges permanent and granting extension to four judges.
The sanctioned strength of Judges in the Madras High Court is 33 permanent Judges and 27 Additional Judges. The present strength is 49. The High Court collegium had already recommended seven names, four from the subordinate judiciary and three from the Bar, to fill the vacancies.
The State government had sent its comments in respect of each of the persons and the Intelligence Bureau had also given its report.
These names are being processed by the Union Law Ministry for further course of action. Even after this there would be four more vacancies to be filled for reaching the full strength of 60 judges.
