VIJAYAWADA: President Ram Nath Kovind on Thursday accepted the recommendation of the Supreme Court Collegium to transfer Chief Justice of High Court of Sikkim Arup Kumar Goswami to Andhra Pradesh High Court. The Centre notified the appointment of Justice Goswami as the Chief Justice of AP HC as well as the transfer of Chief Justice JK Maheshwari from AP to the HC of Sikkim. Born in Jorhat of Assam on March 11, 1961, Justice Goswami graduated from Cotton College under Guwahati University in 1981 and did his LLB from the Government Law College, Guwahati, in 1985.
He enrolled as an advocate in Bar Councils of Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh in August 1985 and practised mainly on civil, criminal, constitutional and service matters. He was designated as Senior Advocate by the High Court of Guwahati in 2004. In 2000-01, he was the Secretary General of the Guwahati High Court Bar Association. He was the Standing Counsel of Guwah a t i HC, Ka r b i Anglong Autonomous Council and North Cachar Hills Autonomous Council and also Senior Standing Counsel of the Education Department of Assam. He was appointed an Additional Judge of the Guwahati HC in 2011 and became a permanent Judge in November 2012. He served as the Executive Chairman of Nagaland State Legal Services Authority (from April 1, 2011 to August 12, 2013), Executive Chairman of Assam State Legal Services Authority (from June 6, 2018 to October 14, 2019) and Executive Chairman of Arunachal Pradesh State Legal Services Autho r i t y ( f r o m March 8, 2016 to October 14, 2019).
From September 6, 2018 to October 20, 2018 and again from May 24, 2019 to October 6, 2019, he was the Acting Chief Justice of the Guwahati HC. He also served as the editor of ATMAN, a biannual news bulletin of the Guwahati HC, from October, 2018 to October 2019. He was appointed the Chief Justice of HC of Sikkim on October 15, 2019. He played for Assam cricket team in Ranji Trophy and also represented the East Zone in Under-19, Under- 22 and at the senior level. The Centre also notified the transfer of Justice Joymalya Bagchi, Judge of Calcutta High Court, as a Judge of AP High Court. Justice Maheshwari was appointed the Chief Justice of High Court of Sikkim. He was elevated as the Chief Justice of AP HC in September 2019. The transfer of the Chief Justices of four States comes in the wake of Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy’s letter to Chief Justice of India SA Bobde complaining of ‘undue influence’ exerted by a sitting Judge of the Supreme Court in the affairs of the AP HC.