One year of judgeship equals five years of being a lawyer in terms of workload: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that one year as a judge is equivalent to five years of being an advocate, in terms of the workload [Rejanish KV v. K Deepa & Ors].

A Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) BR Gavai and Justices MM Sundresh, Aravind Kumar, Satish Chandra Sharma and K Vinod Chandran was hearing arguments on whether a judicial officer who has already completed seven years of practice as a lawyer is entitled to be appointed as a district judge against the Bar quota.

The Court was specifically considering the interpretation of Article 233 of the Constitution, which governs appointments to the post of district judge.

During the hearing, Justice Sundresh remarked on the practical experience of service judges.

“One year of judgeship equals to five years of being a lawyer. That is the volume of work,” he said.

Senior Advocate Jayant Bhushan submitted that Article 233 must be interpreted in a manner that gives effect to all its words.

“Any construction of the statute which makes the provision redundant cannot be accepted,” Bhushan argued.

He explained that if the rival interpretation were to be accepted, part of Article 233(2) would become meaningless.

“The Article says: ‘A person shall only be eligible to be appointed as a District Judge if he has been for not less than seven years an advocate or a pleader, and is recommended by the High Court for appointment.’ If their construction were correct, namely that you must be an advocate and not be in service, the additional words would have become redundant. It is a well-accepted principle that no construction of a statute or the Constitution should render any word redundant,” Bhushan said.

He argued that excluding judicial officers from the reckoning would distort the scheme of the provision.

“If the qualification is restricted in this manner, service judges would be entirely excluded. That cannot be the correct position,” Bhushan said.

Chief Justice Gavai, however, cautioned against reading in requirements beyond the constitutional text.

“You cannot import rules to interpret the Constitution,” the Chief Justice said.

Bhushan also referred to the Shetty Commission’s report, which had noted that exclusion from Higher Judicial Service examinations was a major source of frustration for civil judges.

Senior Advocate Arvind Datar opposed the argument, insisting that the Constitution required continuous practice as a lawyer and not service experience.

“The requirement is that an advocate or pleader should be in practice for the immediate past seven years. The experience must be as a practising advocate, not in service. Article 233 says seven years because the framers wanted to fix a legislative period of maturity. Until you complete seven years you are not even eligible to be considered for appointment as District Judge,” Datar said.

Justice Sundresh, however, noted the weight of work handled by service judges compared to that of lawyers.

The Bench also referred to past judgments, though the judges indicated that the question under Article 233 had not been squarely decided before.

An intervention was sought by candidates preparing for the judicial services examination, but the Chief Justice refused to entertain it.

“No, no. Just because live-streaming is there you all keep filing these IAs,” he said.

Senior Advocate PS Patwalia also argued that the correct interpretation of Article 233 turned on the expression “has been.”

“The phrase ‘has been,’ unless it ends with a participle like ‘being,’ refers to a situation that may have existed in the past but need not necessarily be continuing in the present. This stands in clear contradiction to the use of the expression ‘is.’ For example, in several statutes relating to the appointment of judges as chairpersons in tribunals, the expression used is ‘has been a judge.’"

CJI Gavai observed prima facie that eligibility under Article 233 has to be considered on the date of the application and not on the date of appointment.

Senior Advocate V Giri submitted that Article 233(2) provides only for a quota of advocates for direct recruitment as district judges and does not create any corresponding quota for service judges.

“There is no quota which is contemplated beyond what is expressly stated,” he argued, while pointing out that the seven-year stipulation was intended as a period of maturity and not as a guarantee of appointment.

Senior Advocates Vibha Datta Makhija and Jaideep Gupta also made submissions.

The hearing will continue tomorrow.