Supreme Court allows appointment of retired judges to High Courts on ad-hoc basis

The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered that the High Courts can recommend appointment of retired judges on ad-hoc basis to tackle pendency and clear the backlog of pending criminal appeals [Lok Prahari v. Union of India]..These ad-hoc judges would sit with regular judges in Division Benches.A Special Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sanjiv Khanna and Justices BR Gavai and Surya Kant added that each High Court can appoint two to five judge and in any case, the number should not exceed 10 percent of sanctioned strength"Each High Court shall appoint ad hoc judges by taking recourse to Article 224A," the top court said. Further, the Court said the memorandum of procedure in place shall be applied and resorted to for such appointments. "If required, this bench shall re-assemble for further directions. Liberty granted to parties to move an application if required," it added..The Court earlier had expressed an inclination to modify certain conditions outlined in an April 2021 judgment for the appointment of ad hoc judges.Today, Attorney General for India (AG) R Venkataramani said the government was completely in consensus with the move."We can move ahead and procedural issues and be sorted out later," Venkataramani said..The top court had green lit the appointment of ad-hoc judges to High Courts for the first time by its April 2021 Judgment in the case of Lok Prahari v. Union of India.However, in the same ruling, the Court had also warned against routinely resorting to appointing judges on an ad hoc basis instead of making regular judge appointments. Ad hoc judges cannot be viewed as a routine alternative to regular judges, it had observed. It had, therefore, set certain trigger points for the appointment of ad hoc judges.One of these trigger points was that ad hoc judges can be appointed only if the vacancies are more than 20 per cent of the sanctioned strength (paragraph 53 of the 2021 judgment). Other trigger points included situations such as when cases in a particular category are pending for five or more years or when more than 10 per cent of the backlog has been pending for five years or more or if the rate of institution of new cases is more than the rate of disposal..The Court today relaxed this threshold, observing that the recent data, as per the National Judicial Data Grid, indicates that there has been an increase in pendency levels in almost all High Courts.