The Law Ministry on Wednesday notified the appointment of 14 new judges to the Telangana, Orissa and Kerala High Courts.
Among those appointed, 12 are judicial officers (JO), one is an advocate, and one is a member of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT).
The Department of Justice tweeted with the list of new appointments: “In exercise of the power conferred under the Constitution of India, Hon’ble President of India, in consultation with Hon’ble Chief Justice of India, is pleased to appoint the following Advocates and JOs as Judges of the following High Court.”
While seven judges were appointed to the Telangana High Court, four were appointed to the Kerala High Court, and another three judges were appointed to the Orissa High Court.
P. Madhavi Devi is an ITAT member who has been as judge of the Telangana High Court. Apart from her, other women judges who were appointmented to the Telangana HC include P. Sree Sudha, Dr. C. Sumalatha and Dr. G. Radha Rani. Other JOs appointed were M. Laxman, N. Tukaramji and A. Venkateshwara Reddy.
For the Kerala HC, all the four appointees — Chandrashekharan Kartha Jayachandran, Sophy Thomas, Puthen Veedu Gopala Pillai Ajithkumar, and Chandrashekharan Sudha — are JOs who have been appointed as additional judges.
In the Orissa High Court, while Advocate Mruganka Sekhar Sahoo has been appointed as a judge, two JOs, Radha Krishna Pattanaik and Shashi Kanta Mishra, have been elevated as judges.
All the appointments are part of the Supreme Court Collegium’s recommendations that had processed over 100 names between August 8 and September 1, and eventually recommended 68 names. More names were added later in September as the Collegium had several meetings to clear the backlog in judicial vacancies.
