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R. Poornima and Ors. v. Union of India

Writ Petition (Civil) · 2020 INSC 534Decided 4 Sept 2020
Writ Petition (Civil) No. 1172 of 2019
Chief Justice S.A. Bobde · Justice A.S. Bopanna · Justice V. Ramasubramanian

Background

The petitioners were District Judges in Tamil Nadu who had been directly recruited from the Bar in 2011 and were senior to several colleagues who had instead been promoted up through the judicial service. When the Madras High Court's collegium recommended some of those (more junior, by direct-recruitment seniority) colleagues for elevation to the High Court bench, the petitioners objected, arguing they should be considered too, even though they personally had not yet completed 10 years as judicial officers, by adding their earlier years of practice as advocates (before joining the judiciary) to their years of judicial service.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court closely analysed the text of Article 217(2) of the Constitution, which allows appointment as a High Court judge either via 10 years as a judicial officer, or via 10 years as an advocate, with an "Explanation" permitting some mixing of the two periods, but only where a person practised as an advocate after holding judicial office, not before. Since the petitioners wanted their pre-service years at the Bar counted backwards into their judicial-service tenure, the Court held this was not permitted by the constitutional text, relying also on a recent three-judge bench ruling (Dheeraj Mor) that closed off similar "hopping" between the judicial-service and Bar eligibility routes. The writ petition was dismissed as misconceived.

Lesson Learnt

The two routes to becoming a High Court judge, via the judicial service or via the Bar, are kept separate; years spent practising law before joining the judiciary cannot later be added to one's judicial-service tenure to claim earlier eligibility for elevation.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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