Law ministry appoints four new Supreme Court judges; total number reaches sanctioned strength of 34

The Ministry of Law and Justice on Wednesday appointed four new judges to the Supreme Court, taking the total number of Supreme Court judges to the sanctioned strength of 34.

According to separate law ministry notifications, Justices Krishna Murari, SR Bhat, V Ramasubramanian and Hrishikesh Roy have been appointed as judges of the top court.

The appointments come a month after Parliament passed a bill increasing the judicial strength from 30 to 33, excluding the Chief Justice of India, on 7 August.

The Cabinet had approved the Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Bill, 2019, after Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to increase the number of judges in the top court, citing pendency of cases.

The CJI, who had also sought to raise the retirement age of high court judges to 65 years, said that 58,669 cases were pending in the top court and the number was increasing as new cases were being filed.

Due to paucity of judges, the required number of Constitution benches to decide important cases involving questions of law were not being formed, the CJI had said.

The strength of the top court had last been increased from 25 to 30 through an amendment in 2009.

With inputs from PTI