President Appoints 14 Judicial Officers as High Court Judges, Five Women Among New Appointees
President Droupadi Murmu has appointed 14 judicial officers as Judges and Additional Judges across four High Courts, with five women among the newly appointed judicial officers. The appointments cover the Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, Jharkhand, and Karnataka High Courts. The appointments were formally notified on September 19 after consultation with the Chief Justice of India.
The latest appointments include two women as Judges of the Delhi High Court, namely Nivedita Anil Sharma and Nisha Sahay Saxena. Three other women—Dr Aditi Choudhary, Usharani and Nerale V. Bhavani—have been appointed as Additional Judges of the Delhi and Karnataka High Courts respectively.
The Delhi High Court has received the largest number of appointments in the latest notification. Nivedita Anil Sharma and Nisha Sahay Saxena have been appointed as Judges, while Sanjay Sharma, Bharat Parashar, Dr Aditi Choudhary, Dinesh Bhatt and Arun Bhardwaj have been appointed as Additional Judges.
The appointments come at a time when the Delhi High Court has 60 sanctioned judicial positions. According to a recent report, the seven appointments take the court’s working strength to 50, although several judges are also due to retire in the coming months.
The Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court will have Yash Paul Bourney as a newly appointed Judge. His appointment adds another judicial officer to the High Court under the latest round of appointments notified by the Centre.
Three judicial officers have been appointed as Judges of the Jharkhand High Court. They are Manoj Prasad, Akhil Kumar and Ram Sharma. Their appointments form another part of the Centre’s latest effort to fill judicial positions through the constitutional appointment process.
The Karnataka High Court has received three appointments as Additional Judges. The appointees are Usharani, K.S. Bharath Kumar and Nerale V. Bhavani. With two women among these three appointments, Karnataka accounts for a significant portion of the female representation in this latest round.
The five women among the 14 appointments are Nivedita Anil Sharma, Nisha Sahay Saxena, Dr Aditi Choudhary, Usharani and Nerale V. Bhavani. Their inclusion means women constitute more than one-third of the judicial officers covered by this particular notification.
The appointments followed recommendations made by the Supreme Court Collegium. The Collegium had considered judicial officers for elevation to the concerned High Courts earlier in September. For the Delhi High Court, eight names had been recommended, while seven of those recommendations were included in the government’s September 19 notification.
The Delhi recommendations had included Gurvinder Pal Singh, who was serving as Principal District and Sessions Judge at Rohini. His name, however, does not appear in the latest presidential notification, which covers seven Delhi High Court appointments.
The appointments also demonstrate the constitutional distinction between Judges and Additional Judges of High Courts. While some judicial officers in the notification have been appointed as Judges, others have been appointed as Additional Judges under the constitutional framework governing High Court appointments.
The latest round is significant not only for strengthening the judicial benches of four High Courts but also because of the representation of women in the new appointments. The five appointments add to the continuing presence of women in India’s higher judiciary and form part of the broader process of filling vacancies and strengthening judicial capacity across High Courts.
