New Delhi: The Supreme Court collegium is likely to meet either on Monday or Tuesday to finalise the names of some new high court judges for elevation to the top court.

The current strength of the Supreme Court is 22 against the sanctioned 31 judges, including the Chief Justice of India.

Besides finalising the new names, the collegium is expected to send back to the Centre the file reiterating the name of Uttarakhand High Court Chief Justice K.M. Joseph for elevation to the Supreme Court. The Centre had earlier returned to the collegium Justice Joseph's name.

It is understood that some apex court judges individually met CJI Dipak Misra informally in the past few days and broached the depleted strength of the Supreme Court.

The CJI was told that the decreased strength had resulted in enormous workload for the judges as on most days they have to deal with 50-60 cases each.

The strength of the apex court will go down further to 19 as CJI Misra and Justices Madan B. Lokur and Kurien Joseph will retire by the end of the year. All three are part of the five-member collegium.

Although the collegium had met over three times since May to finalise the names of judges for elevation, there were reservations over some probables, holding up the final decision.

Because of the lack of unanimity over the names of the other new judges, the collegium had not sent the file relating to Justice K.M. Joseph. The collegium wants to send all the names together.

According to sources, the names of Indira Banerjee, whose parent court is Calcutta High Court and who is currently the Chief Justice of Madras High Court, R. Subhash Reddy, who originally belongs to the Telangana Bar and is now the Gujarat High Court Chief Justice, and Justice Dinesh Maheshwari, the Karnataka High Court Chief Justice, are doing the rounds for elevation.