Eight HC judges take oath

Patna, June 20: Chief Justice Rekha M. Doshit administered oath to eight newly appointed judges of Patna High Court today.

The newly appointed additional judges include Vijeyandra Nath, Shivaji Pandey, Ashwani Kumar Singh, Vikash Jain, Ahsanuddin Amanullah, Aditya Kumar Trivedi, Rajendra Kumar Mishra and Amaresh Kumar Lal.

The first five judges were appointed from the high court Bar, whereas Trivedi, Mishra and Lal were elevated from the lower judiciary. These three were district judges earlier.

The additional judges were sworn in at a ceremony in the Marble Hall of the high court in the presence of serving judges, retired judges, dignitaries, advocates as well as families of the newly appointed judges. Bihar State Human Rights Commission chairman Justice (retired) S.N. Jha and Lokayukta Justice (retired) R.N. Prasad were also present during the oath-taking ceremony.

With the induction of these judges, the strength of high court judges has gone up to 39 against the sanctioned posts of 43.

Experts welcomed the appointment of judges and said the move could expedite the disposal rate of cases. This is the first instance in recent memory that as many as eight high court judges have been appointed at the same time.

Yogesh Chandra Verma, a senior advocate and the president of the co-ordination committee of all three advocates’ associations of the high court, told The Telegraph: “It is probably the first time in the history of the high court that eight judges have been appointed at one go and all of them have taken oath on a single day.”

Welcoming the move, Verma said: “It is a good sign that constitutional functionaries have taken care of it and have filled up the vacancies as it would expedite the disposal rate (of cases) and subsequently reduce the number of pending cases in the high court, which stands at 1.5 lakh now.”

“One of the reasons for the low rate of disposal of cases or piling up of arrears has been the lack of sufficient numbers of judges,” he said, adding that most of the time, the high court has functioned either with half of its strength of judges or a little more than half, which has adversely affected the speedy disposal of cases.