Centre notifies appointment of 29 high court judges, including two for Himachal Pradesh HC

The Centre on Friday notified the appointment of two advocates as judges of Himachal Pradesh High Court, which is currently functioning with only 11 judges as against the strength of 17.

The two lawyers appointed as judges are Jiya Lal Bhardwaj and Romesh Verma, Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal announced on X.

It also cleared the appointment of Justice Soumen Sen of the Calcutta High Court as Chief Justice of the Meghalaya High Court.

Justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma of the Rajasthan High Court will take over as the Chief Justice of that High Court after the retirement of Justice Kalpathi Rajendran Shriram on September 27, and Justice Sujoy Paul of the Calcutta High Court will take over as the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court consequent upon appointment of Justice Soumen Sen as Chief Justice of the High Court of Meghalaya.

The Centre also notified the appointment of 10 advocates and 14 judicial officers as judges of the Allahabad High Court.

The lawyers cleared for appointment as judges of the Allahabad High Court were: Vivek Saran, Vivek Kumar Singh, Garima Prashad, Sudhanshu Chauhan, Abdhesh Kumar Chaudhary, Swarupama Chaturvedi, Siddharth Nandan, Kunal Ravi Singh, Indrajeet Shukla, and Satya Veer Singh.

The judicial officers elevated to the Allahabad High Court were: Dr Ajay Kumar- II, Chawan Prakash, Divesh Chandra Samant, Prashant Mishra-I, Tarun Saxena, Rajeev Bharti, Padam Narain Mishra, Lakshmi Kant Shukla, Jai Prakash Tiwari, Devendra Singh-I, Sanjiv Kumar, Vani Ranjan Agrawal, Achal Sachdev, and Babita Rani.

The Government, however, withheld the names of advocates Adnan Ahmad and Jai Krishna Upadhyay who were also recommended for elevation to the Allahabad High Court which had the actual strength of 84 as on September 1, judges against the sanctioned strength of 160.

It also cleared the appointment of three judicial officers — Geetha Kadaba Bharatharaja Setty, Muralidhara Pai Borkatte and Tyagaraja Narayan Inavally as judges of the Karnataka High Court.