Two days before a scheduled hearing in the Supreme Court on delay by the Union government in processing collegium’s recommendations, the Centre on Wednesday notified transfer of 16 high court judges and appointment of 17 new judges in various high courts.

Union law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal announced the development on platform X (formerly Twitter). This is perhaps the highest number of notifications issued by the Centre on transfer and appointment of judges on a single day.

Those shifted to other high courts included judges from the list of 26 recommendations made by the collegium in the first week of August, apart from justice MV Muralidaran, the acting chief justice of Manipur high court. His transfer was recommended by the collegium on October 10 following rejection of the judge’s request to either let him continue in the same high court or shift him to his parent high court at Madras.

A judicial order issued by a single-judge bench of justice Muralidaran on March 23 had become the trigger point for the ethnic clashes between the Meiteis and the Kukis in the northeastern state. Justice Muralidaran passed the controversial order for the Manipur government to consider including the Meitei community in the Scheduled Tribe (ST) list.

Among 17 new judges appointed in different high courts, six are lawyers while the remaining are judicial officers. As of October 1, 347 posts of high court judges were lying vacant in the 25 high courts across the country against the total strength of 1,114. The vacancy translates to more than 31% of the total strength.

A Supreme Court bench, led by justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, will on October 20 take up a contempt plea, complaining against inordinate delay by the Centre in processing collegium’s recommendations. The contempt plea in the matter has been filed by Advocate Association, Bengaluru, through advocate Amit Pai, highlighting several instances of pending appointments and unexplained holdover by the government.

On September 26, the Supreme Court had decided to monitor the steps taken by the Centre in acting on collegium’s recommendations for appointing and transferring judges, expressing its anguish at the delays.

When the matter was taken up next on October 9, the court observed that collegium’s recommendations cannot remain in limbo, emphasising that instead of sitting on them indefinitely, the government must either notify those appointments or send them back citing specific objections. Attorney general R Venkataramani, appearing for the Centre, assured the court that of the 26 cases of transfer of judges from one high court to another, 14 files will be cleared soon.

The delay in notifying the transfers of judges was viewed seriously by the Supreme Court during its proceedings in January and February as well. At that time, the bench took strong exception to the government sitting over almost a dozen recommendations pertaining to the transfer of high court judges, making it clear that “any delay in transfers may result in administrative and judicial actions which may not be palatable”. It added that lack of consistency in the time taken by the Centre to notify the recommendations was creating “issues of faith” between the judiciary and the executive.