HC dismisses PIL against non-appointment of judges including regular Chief Justice

Hyderabad: The High Court at Hyderabad on Friday dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by an advocate against the inaction of different stakeholders with respect to non-appointment of regular chief justice, non-filling up of the vacancies to the sanctioned strength and not appointing any member of the Bar of the Telangana State for the past four years.

While dismissing the PIL filed by S Satyam Reddy, the bench comprising Justice V Ramasubramanian and Justice J Uma Devi made interesting observations.Referring to the contention of the petitioner that the issue of appointment of a regular chief justice and the issue of non-appointment of any member of the Bar from Telangana for the past four years, the High Court observed that the Supreme Court in its order on March 20, 2017 in connection with a similar petition had said that a rigorous process for filling up large number of unfilled vacancies at various levels was in progress and there was no reason to doubt whether the Supreme Court on its administrative side will or will not take up the issue of appointment of a regular chief justice along with the issue of filling up of the vacancies.

Referring to the issue of non-appointment of any member of the Bar from the State of Telangana for the past four years, the High Court observed that the State of Telangana itself was born only on June 2, 2014 and the Collegium of the High Court recommended the names of six members of the Bar and four members from the service. The recommendations made in May, 2016, bore fruit partially, when four appointments were made in January, 2017.

The High Court also observed that an interesting averment has been made in the PIL that as on date there were only two judges elevated from the Bar and two judges elevated from the service, who belong to the State of Telangana. In other words, according to the petitioner, all other judges of the High Court, barring those from outside the State, belong to the State of Andhra Pradesh.“The above averment of the writ petitioner assumes significance for several reasons.

In this court, there are several judges who were born and brought up only in Hyderabad. But it appears that the petitioner (and he is not alone in thinking so) does not consider them as belonging to the State of Telangana, for the simple reason that their forefathers hailed from areas which now form part of the bifurcated State of Andhra Pradesh. In other words, unless the DNA of the judges indicate their ancestry to Telangana, they are not to be considered as belonging to Telangana, despite their birth, growth and assimilation into the city of Hyderabad for decades.

This opinion stands in contrast to the Presidential Orders issued in exercise of the power conferred by Article 371 D of the Constitution,” the High Court observed.The High Court said that, “The grievances of the petitioner are not capable of being remedied by the wave of a magic wand. If a member of the judicial fraternity himself does not repose faith and trust in what is recorded in an order of the highest court of the land, we do not know who else will do so,” the court added.