For the first time since 2008 when the Parliament increased the Supreme Court’s strength to 31 judges, the apex court will now finally sit at its full strength again as the Chief Justice of IndiaRanjan Gogoi today (May 24, 2019) administered the oath of office to four new judges.
Justices B.R. Gavai, Aniruddha Bose, A.S. Bopanna and Surya Kant are the new judges who took the office after the Centre cleared their appointments on May 22, 2019.
On May 8, 2019, the SC Collegium recommended the elevation of Justice Gavai and Justice Kant from Bombay High Court and Himachal Pradesh High Court respectively.
Moreover, the elevation of Justices Bose and Bopanna was recommended by the Collegium on April 12, 2019. The Centre had initially returned this proposal, but the Collegium later reiterated the same on May 8, 2019.
With this, the CJI Gogoi headed Collegium has succeeded in appointing 10 Supreme Court judges in seven months. The other six are Justices Hemant Gupta, R. Subhash Reddy, M.R. Shah and Ajay Rastogi on November 2, 2018, and Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and Sanjiv Khanna on January 18, 2019.
