KOCHI: There is no action to fill the vacancies of judges even when the number of pending cases in the Kerala High Court is close to two lakh. There are currently 14 vacancies for judges. Although the High Court recommended nine names for appointment to the collegium at various stages, the Supreme Court collegium's decision in this regard is delayed.

Steps were taken by Justice SVN Bhatti during his tenure as Chief Justice to dispose of the pending cases. The practice which he started that each bench should consider a certain number of old cases in addition to the existing cases, is still continued. According to current data, most of the cases pending in the High Court are five to ten years old. There are 54,890 civil cases and 11,104 criminal cases under this category. Apart from this, there are 17 cases that are more than thirty years old.

Kerala High Court requires 47 judges including 35 permanent judges and 12 additional judges, but there are only 33 judges including 31 permanent judges and two additional judges. The High Court Collegium had submitted a list of seven district judges to the Supreme Court last March to fill the vacancies. The names were recommended by a collegium comprising Chief Justice S Manikumar, Justice SVN Bhatti and Justice K Vinodchandran.

Justice Vinodchandran gave another list to the Supreme Court Collegium after removing two persons from the list given by Chief Justice Manikumar and Justice Bhatti and adding two others. Chief Justice and Justice Bhatti recommended the names of MB Snehalatha, PJ Vincent, C Krishnakumar, Johnson John, G Girish, C Pradeep Kumar and former High Court Registrar General P Krishnakumar. Justice Vinodchandran's list included the names of KV Jayakumar and P Seithalavi, excluding PJ Vincent and C Krishnakumar. Due to this difference, Supreme Court did not take a decision on both lists.

Earlier the High Court Collegium had recommended the names of lawyers Sanjeetha Arakkal and Arvind Kumar Babu, but there was no decision on this either.

Pending cases

Civil : 1,50,705
Criminal : 37,751
Total : 1,88,456