Union Cabinet Clears Proposal To Increase Supreme Court Strength To 33 Judges (Excluding CJI)

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the proposal to introduce a bill to increase the number of judges in Supreme Court from 30 to 33 excluding the Chief Justice of India.

The strength of the Supreme Court is fixed by law made by the Parliament as per Article 124(1) of the Constitution of India. Therefore, the strength can be increased by way of parliamentary legislation.

Addressing the media after the Cabinet meeting, Union Minister of Information & Broadcasting Prakash Javadekar said,

"When there are so many matters pending in the Supreme Court, there is a need for more judges. Today, the Cabinet has taken a decision to increase the strength from 30 to 33 judges. That will be an increase of 10%. This is a great decision

Right now, the Bench is full. Now, three more judges will be sanctioned."

The Minister added that the NDA government has increased the strength of High Court judges to 1079 by sanctioning 173 additional posts in 2016.

#Cabinet decides to introduce bill to increase the number of Judges of #SupremeCourt from 30 to 33; 10 % increase in the number of #SupremeCourt Judges. pic.twitter.com/J4m6Wwo5aa

— PIB India (@PIB_India) July 31, 2019

The Supreme Court attained the full sanctioned strength of 31 judges last May with the appointments of Justices BR Gavai, Aniruddha Bose, A S Bopanna and Surya Kant.

In May, the CJI had written to the Prime Minister seeking steps to increase the SC strength and the retirement age of High Court judges as 65 years.

In 1988, after about three decades the judge strength of the SC was increased from 18 to 26, and then again after two decades in 2009, it was increased to 31, including the CJI.

Of the current SC judges,  Justice AM Sapre will retire on August 27 and Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi  will retire on November 17 this year.