NEW DELHI: Days after the new Chief Justice of India Jagdish Singh Khehar assured that the Supreme Court is soon going to function in its full strength, a mere data analysis reveals that from the 24 HCs in the country, it is the Bombay HC that has given a maximum of 23 judges including seven Chief Justices.
The SC, which started functioning with eight judges in 1950, today has a strength of 31 judges but now stands at an alarming vacancy of eight judges. In the last 66 years, the SC had 224 judges. Of these, 43 were appointed as Chief Justice of India, and seven judges were elevated from the bar to SC judges.
An unwritten quota system is prevalent in the Supreme Court as per which at least one judge from each High Court has to be part of the apex court’s bench. The Bombay High Court was closely followed by the High Court of Calcutta that has seen 21 judges elevated to the SC.
Similarly, the Madras High Court and the Allahabad HC have given 21 and 20 judges respectively to the SC. Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura and Sikkim HCs have never represented in the apex court. HCs of Himachal and Uttarakhand have contributed one judge each to the SC.
Ironically, India has never had a woman Chief Justice and only six women judges reached the SC of the 224 judges appointed since 1950. At present, Justice R Banumathi is the only woman judge in the SC of the total 25 judges. Nine HCs did not have a single woman judge and three HCs had only one woman judge. The Bombay HC has the highest number of women judges at 10 followed by Delhi and Punjab and Haryana HC, both with nine woman judges each. There are just 62 women judges compared to 611 male judges in 24 HC across the country.