Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking increase in the strength of judges and raise the retirement age of High Court Judges to 65 years.
CJI Ranjan Gogoi also asked the Prime Minister to make tenure appointments of retired apex court judges and high court judges under Article 128 and 224A of the Constitution respectively to clear backlog of cases pending for years.
Gogoi has written three letters to PM in which hementioned that there was a pendency of 58,669 cases in the Supreme Court andthe number is increasing due to filing of more fresh cases.
The CJI further stated that it is due to the paucityof judges that the required number of Constitution benches to decide importantcases involving questions of law was not being formed. The letter also statedthat about three decades ago in 1988, the judges strength of the apex court wasincreased from 18 to 26 and then again after two decades in 2009, it wasincreased to 31 including the CJI to expedite disposal of cases to keep pacewith the rate of institution.
He also mentioned in his letter to PM requesting tokindly consider, on top priority, to augment the judge-strength in the topcourt appropriately so that it can function more efficiently and effectively asit will go a long way to attain ultimate goal of rendering timely justice tothe litigant public.
The CJI in his second letter to the PM urged toconsider bringing a constitutional amendment to increase the retirement age ofhigh court judges from 62 to 65 years. He said that at present there are 399posts lying vacant or 37 percent of sanctioned judge-strength and thesevacancies needs to be filled immediately.
The CJI also wrote that the retirement age of highcourt judges should be raised by three years to 65 years.
