Shimla, May 14
In the serene hills of Shimla, a tale of two district judges from Himachal Pradesh unfolds, challenging the appointment of high court judges due to alleged breaches of seniority and merit by the Himachal High Court collegium.
Their grievance found its way to the halls of the Supreme Court, where Justices Hrishikesh Roy and Prashant Kumar Mishra presided over the matter on Monday. The esteemed court saw fit to issue notices to the Himachal Pradesh High Court registry, setting the stage for the next chapter in this legal saga on July 15, 2024.
Chirag Bhanu Singh, the district judge of Solan, and Arvind Malhotra, the district judge of Bilaspur, voiced their dissent through a special leave petition, asserting that their rightful ascension to the position of high court judges was disregarded on January 5, contrary to established norms.
They lamented that despite their seasoned tenure as the most senior district judges in the state, the High Court Collegium favored junior judicial officers, flouting the sanctity of Supreme Court guidelines for judicial appointments.
Their plea echoed the sentiment that their impeccable track records were unjustly sidelined during the recent selection process for Himachal Pradesh’s high court judgeship.
Seeking redress, the duo implored the Supreme Court to halt the appointments made by the Himachal Pradesh High Court and intervene to rectify their predicament. They highlighted the Law Ministry’s endorsement of their candidacies, urging the Collegium to reconsider their names, initially proposed by the Supreme Court in July 2023 and reaffirmed in January 2024.
The Himachal High Court’s disregard for their nominations in the past month spurred them to seek judicial intervention once more, decrying the replacements as ‘incompetent’.
As the legal wheels turn, the court may convene after the summer recess, mindful of the earlier instance where the Supreme Court admonished similar transgressions in high court appointments, marking this as the second such challenge to ascendancy in the halls of justice.
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