September 3, 2025

The Allahabad High Court is at the top of the vacancy list among Indian High Courts, sitting with 76 judge posts unfilled as of September 1, says official data from the Department of Justice (DoJ). With a sanctioned strength of 160 judges, the court is running with just 84 judges, a little over half its capacity. This shortage is a big deal for one of the largest courts in the country. To tackle this gap, the Supreme Court Collegium has stepped up with a powerful move! On September 1, the Collegium met and proposed 26 new judges for appointment at Allahabad High Court. This includes 14 judicial officers and 12 advocates. Among the advocates are two senior women lawyers, Garima Parshad and Swarupama Chaturvedi, shining stars from the Supreme Court Bar. The proposals were released on the Supreme Court’s website on September 2, marking one of the largest recommendations to a single High Court in recent times. This fresh crop of judges promises to fuel fresh hope for speedy justice in Allahabad. But Allahabad is not alone in facing vacancies. The Bombay High Court has 26 vacancies out of 94 sanctioned seats and a working strength of 68 judges. Calcutta High Court faces 24 vacancies, functioning with 48 judges out of 72 seats. Similarly, Punjab and Haryana High Court has 25 empty slots working with 60 judges against 84 sanctioned ones, shows the September 1 data. Before this move, on August 27, the Collegium also recommended transferring judges among nine High Courts—Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Kerala, Madras, Rajasthan, Allahabad, Gujarat, and Calcutta—shuffling 14 judges in total. The recommended judicial officers for Allahabad High Court include Dr. Ajay Kumar-II, Chawan Prakash, Divesh Chandra Samant, Prashant Mishra-I, Tarun Saxena, Rajeev Bharti, Padam Narain Mishra, Lakshmi Kant Shukla, Jai Prakash Tiwari, Devendra Singh-I, Sanjiv Kumar, Vani Ranjan Agrawal, Achal Sachdev, and Babita Rani. Among advocates, the Collegium put forward names like Vivek Saran, Adnan Ahmad, Vivek Kumar Singh, Sudhanshu Chauhan, Abdhesh Kumar Chaudhary, Jai Krishna Upadhyay, Siddharth Nandan, Kunal Ravi Singh, Indrajeet Shukla, and Satya Veer Singh, alongside the two senior women lawyers. With these exciting and much-needed appointments on the horizon, will the Allahabad High Court soon overcome its judge shortage and clear its huge backlog of cases? Time will tell, but this fresh push is certainly a spicy development in the Indian judicial world!

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Tags: Allahabad high court, Judge vacancies, Supreme court collegium, Judicial appointments, Indian judiciary, High court vacancies,