A Judicial Expansion: 14 New Judges Appointed to Four High Courts
(By Syed Ali Taher Abedi)
New Delhi, September 19, 2026-In a significant and wide-ranging exercise of the constitutional power vested in the President of India under Article 217 of the Constitution the provision that governs appointments to the High Courts of India the Central Government on Saturday notified the appointment of fourteen judicial officers as Judges and Additional Judges across four of the nation’s constitutional courts the High Courts of Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, Jharkhand, and Karnataka.
The appointments were announced by Union Law and Justice Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal through an official post on X, in which he quoted the formal presidential notification: “In exercise of the power conferred by the Constitution of India, after consultation with the Chief Justice of India, the President is pleased to appoint the following Judicial Officers as Judges/Additional Judges in the High Courts.”
The simultaneous notification of fourteen appointments across four High Courts in a single presidential exercise is a significant institutional development one that reflects the sustained momentum in judicial appointment that has characterised the closing months of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s tenure, during which the Collegium has maintained an accelerated pace of recommendations and the Central Government has responded with comparative swiftness in issuing formal notifications.
The Constitutional Architecture: Article 217 and the Appointment Process
Before examining the individual appointments, it is worth placing the notification within its constitutional and institutional framework.
Article 217 of the Constitution of India provides that every Judge of a High Court shall be appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal, after consultation with the Chief Justice of India, the Governor of the State, and, in the case of appointment of a Judge other than the Chief Justice, the Chief Justice of the High Court. The operative phrase “after consultation with the Chief Justice of India” is the constitutional provision through which the Supreme Court Collegium’s recommendations find formal expression in the presidential appointment notification.
In the institutional framework that has governed judicial appointments to the High Courts since the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment in the Second Judges Case in 1993, the Collegium’s recommendation carries a primacy that the Central Government has accepted as a constitutional convention meaning that once the Collegium reiterates a recommendation after the Government’s reconsideration, the appointment must proceed.
The fourteen appointments notified on Saturday are the formal culmination of the Collegium’s recommendations for these four courts recommendations that have passed through the full institutional process of collegial deliberation, executive examination, and presidential approval before crystallising in Saturday’s gazette notification.
Delhi High Court: Two Judges and Five Additional Judges
The Delhi High Court the constitutional court for the National Capital Territory, one of the busiest and most consequential High Courts in India, with jurisdiction over a vast and varied docket spanning constitutional, criminal, civil, service, commercial, and intellectual property matters receives the largest single increment of judicial strength in Saturday’s notifications, with seven new appointments in total.
Judicial officers Nivedita Anil Sharma and Nisha Sahay Saxena have been appointed as Judges of the Delhi High Court permanent appointments that confer upon the appointees the full constitutional status of High Court judges, entitled to serve until the age of sixty-two years.
Five additional judicial officers Sanjay Sharma, Bharat Parashar, Aditi Choudhary, Dinesh Bhatt, and Arun Bhardwaj have been appointed as Additional Judges of the Delhi High Court.
Additional judgeships are appointments made for an initial period of two years, after which the appointee may be confirmed as a permanent judge upon a fresh recommendation of the Collegium, if his or her performance during the additional judgeship period is found satisfactory.
The appointment of two permanent judges and five additional judges to the Delhi High Court in a single notification reflects the scale of the vacancy challenge facing a court that services the capital’s enormous and ever-growing litigation load.
Delhi’s courts from the High Court to the district judiciary face among the most severe pendency pressures in the country, and the infusion of seven judicial officers into the High Court’s complement is a welcome, if partial, response to the institutional need.
The appointments to the Delhi High Court also carry a dimension of particular institutional note in the context of the ongoing national conversation about gender representation in the higher judiciary.
The permanent appointment of Nivedita Anil Sharma and the additional appointment of Aditi Choudhary bring two more women to the Delhi High Court’s bench a contribution to the gradual but essential process of making India’s constitutional courts more accurately reflective of the diverse citizenry they serve.
High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh: One Judge
Judicial officer Yashpal Bourney has been appointed as a Judge of the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh the constitutional court whose jurisdiction covers the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and the Union Territory of Ladakh, two of the most geographically vast and constitutionally significant territorial units in India.
The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh occupies a position of distinctive constitutional importance presiding over a territory whose administrative and political transformation, following the constitutional changes of August 2019, has generated an extraordinary volume of litigation touching upon property rights, political freedoms, administrative restructuring, and the constitutional rights of residents under the changed framework.
A judicial bench of adequate strength is, in this context, not merely an administrative requirement but a constitutional necessity.
Justice Bourney’s appointment adds one judge to a High Court that, given the breadth of its jurisdiction and the complexity of its docket, requires the full deployment of its sanctioned judicial strength to discharge its constitutional responsibilities effectively.
Jharkhand High Court: Three Permanent Judges
Three judicial officers Manoj Prasad, Akhil Kumar, and Ram Sharma have been appointed as Judges of the Jharkhand High Court, receiving permanent appointments to the constitutional court that serves the state of Jharkhand.
The Jharkhand High Court’s docket is characterised by a distinctive combination of matters including extensive tribal rights litigation, forest and mineral rights disputes, labour law cases arising from the state’s industrial character, and a substantial criminal jurisdiction over a territory that has historically faced significant law and order challenges. The appointment of three judges simultaneously to a court that serves a population of over forty million citizens is a meaningful institutional contribution to the court’s capacity to address the pendency that these diverse and demanding categories of litigation generate.
Karnataka High Court: Three Additional Judges
Three judicial officers Usha Rani, KS Bharath Kumar, and Nerale V Bhavnani have been appointed as Additional Judges of the Karnataka High Court.
The Karnataka High Court is one of India’s most significant constitutional courts a court that presides over one of the country’s most economically dynamic states, whose docket reflects the full complexity of a jurisdiction that encompasses Bengaluru’s technology sector disputes, the state’s extensive agricultural economy, significant constitutional and administrative litigation, and a substantial criminal jurisdiction.
The addition of three additional judges to a court of this character and workload is an institutional development that the Bench, the Bar, and the litigants of Karnataka will receive with justified appreciation.
The appointment of Usha Rani as an Additional Judge of the Karnataka High Court is notable in the context of the judiciary’s ongoing efforts to improve gender representation at the level of the High Court bench an effort whose progress has been uneven across different courts, and whose advancement through appointments of this character is both constitutionally necessary and institutionally welcome.
The Broader Institutional Context: Vacancies, Momentum, and the CJI’s Final Season
Saturday’s notification of fourteen appointments across four courts arrives in the final weeks of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s tenure a tenure that has been marked, in its institutional governance dimensions, by a sustained and deliberate effort to address the vacancy crisis that has long burdened India’s High Courts.
The CJI’s Collegium has, in recent months, maintained an accelerated pace of recommendations across multiple High Courts with appointments to the Bombay, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana, Telangana, and other courts having been notified in rapid succession in the months since the Supreme Court itself was elevated to near-full strength with the induction of five new judges in June.
The cumulative effect of this appointment momentum is measurable in institutional terms each new judge appointed to a High Court contributes to the court’s hearing capacity, enables the formation of additional benches, and reduces marginally but meaningfully the interval between the filing of a case and its eventual disposal.
Behind every appointment notification lies the human reality of litigants waiting for hearings, of cases listed for years without substantive progress, and of a constitutional promise of timely justice that the judiciary continues to work, judge by judge and appointment by appointment, to honour.
Saturday’s fourteen appointments are, in the most immediate sense, a gazette notification of presidential warrants.
In the deepest constitutional sense, they are fourteen additional commitments made in the President’s name, under the hand and seal of constitutional authority to the citizens of Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, Jharkhand, and Karnataka that the justice they are constitutionally entitled to seek will be heard, considered, and decided by courts of adequate strength and competence.
The Appointees: A Summary
For the record, Saturday’s appointments are as follows:
Delhi High Court — Judges (Permanent): Nivedita Anil Sharma; Nisha Sahay Saxena.
Delhi High Court — Additional Judges: Sanjay Sharma; Bharat Parashar; Aditi Choudhary; Dinesh Bhatt; Arun Bhardwaj.
High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh — Judge (Permanent): Yashpal Bourney.
Jharkhand High Court — Judges (Permanent): Manoj Prasad; Akhil Kumar; Ram Sharma.
Karnataka High Court — Additional Judges: Usha Rani; KS Bharath Kumar; Nerale V Bhavnani.
