Fill All Vacancies Of Judges Demand Allahabad High Court Lawyers: Judicial Work Getting Hampered Due To Severe Shortage Of Judges

By Rajesh Pandey

Lawyers of Allahabad High Court, on a call given by the High Court Bar Association (HCBA) also reframed from judicial work on Friday (February 21) in protest against the decreasing strength of judges in the Allahabad High Court and also against the proposed amendments in Advocates’ Act.

In a meeting of the executive council, it was stated that the sanctioned strength of the judges of Allahabad High Court is 160. However, at present, the high court at Allahabad is working on less than half of the sanctioned strength, as only 55 judges are working in the high court at Allahabad and 23 judges working at its Lucknow Bench.

Against this backdrop, the HCBA expressed its deep anguish that the principal seat of the high court had never achieved its sanctioned strength of judges. According to HCBA, this situation is affecting what it called the ‘independence of the judiciary’ and is also adversely affecting the ‘public faith in judicial process’.

As per HCBA due to an insufficient number of judges, the pendency of cases is increasing and the cases are not being taken up for several months in the high court.

In this backdrop, the meeting headed by bar’s president Anil Tiwari and presided over by Vikrant Pandey demanded not only the filling up of sanctioned strength of judges but also an increase in the sanctioned strength of judges at Allahabad High Court to meet the increasing number of cases of each passing days.

According to the joint secretary press of HCBA, Puneet Kumar Shukla, all the office-bearers of the bar association were present in this crucial meeting of the executive council of HCBA on Thursday.