SC Collegium recommends 6 lawyers as judges at Kerala High Court

New Delhi: The Supreme Court Collegium headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud on Tuesday recommended to the Centre the names of six advocates for appointment as judges of the Kerala High Court.

The Collegium, also comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and B R Gavai, also recommended that judicial officer Mohammad Yousuf Wani be appointed as an additional judge of the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. 

"Given the above, the Collegium resolves to recommend that Abdul Hakhim Mullappally Abdul Aziz, Syam Kumar Vadakke Mudavakkat, Harisankar Vijayan Menon, Manu Sreedharan Nair, Easwaran Subramani and Manoj Pulamby Madhavan, advocates, be appointed as judges of the High Court of Kerala. Their inter se seniority be fixed as per the existing practice," said one of the Collegium resolutions uploaded on the apex court website.

Regarding one of the recommended names, it said, "The report of the government notes that nothing adverse has come to notice regarding the integrity of the candidate. However, the said input indicates that his professional competence 'is viewed to be average'."

The Collegium, which said the observation on the professional competence of the candidate is not correct bearing in mind that he has 50 reported judgments to his credit delivered by the high court, also referred to his professional income.

"The opinion of the Collegium of the High Court on the competence and suitability of the candidate would have to be given due credence since the members of the Collegium of the High Court have seen and observed his performance," it said.

While recommending one of the names, the Collegium said it has taken note of the inputs provided by the Department of Justice. "The above input that the candidate 'is considered to be a CPI(M) sympathizer' is extremely vague. Similarly, that he was appointed as a government pleader in 2010 and 2016-2021 by the LDF government does not constitute a valid ground to reject his candidature," it said.

The Collegium said as a matter of fact, the appointment of the candidate as a government pleader would indicate that he would have acquired sufficient experience in handling cases where the state is a party in diverse branches of law.

"The input that the candidate is considered to be a CPI(M) sympathizer is otherwise vague and bereft of cogent grounds. Even otherwise, the mere fact that the candidate has had a political background may not be a sufficient reason in all cases," it said.

"For example, in the recent past, an advocate has been appointed as a judge of the high court though she was an office bearer of a political party prior to her elevation," the Collegium said.

It also recommended that five additional judges of the Allahabad High Court -- Justices Saurabh Srivastava, Om Prakash Shukla, Mohd. Azhar Husain Idrisi, Jyotsna Sharma and Surendra Singh-I -- be appointed as permanent judges of that high court.

The Collegium also recommended that 11 additional judges of the Bombay High Court be appointed as permanent judges of that high court. They are, Justices Urmila Sachin Joshi-Phalke, Bharat Pandurang Deshpande, Kishore Chandrakant Sant, Valmiki S A Menezes, Kamal Rashmi Khata, Sharmila Uttamrao Deshmukh, Arun Ramnath Pedneker, Sandeep Vishnupant Marne, Gauri Vinod Godse, Rajesh Shantaram Patil and Arif Saleh Doctor.