Judicial appointments in India move through a distinctive process, the collegium system, that has been a recurring point of tension between the executive and judiciary since 2014. This article compiles the appointment data and traces that tension’s key episodes.
The Supreme Court’s Sanctioned Strength
The Supreme Court’s sanctioned strength stood at 34, including the Chief Justice of India, for most of this period, before the government raised it to 38 in May 2026 through a presidential ordinance, later cleared by the Rajya Sabha as a bill, a change explained as necessary to address a growing backlog of pending cases, according to SCC Online’s coverage and The Tribune’s reporting on the bill’s passage. Since 2014, virtually the entire Supreme Court bench has turned over through collegium recommendations, with Deccan Herald periodically reporting on the court returning to its sanctioned strength each time new judges were sworn in following a round of retirements.
The NJAC Episode
One of the most consequential Executive-Judiciary confrontations of this period came early. The government passed the 99th Constitutional Amendment and the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, intended to replace the existing collegium system, where senior judges recommend appointments among themselves, with a new six-member body including the Law Minister and two “eminent persons” alongside judges. The law received presidential assent on December 31, 2014, and came into force in April 2015. The Supreme Court struck it down in a 4-1 ruling in October 2015, with the main opinion, according to the Supreme Court Observer’s analysis, holding that the inclusion of the Law Minister and eminent persons gave the executive an effective veto that threatened judicial independence, restoring the original collegium system that continues to this day.
High Court Vacancies
High Court vacancies have been a persistent, well-documented problem across this period. According to PRS Legislative Research’s analysis, High Courts had 406 vacancies out of 1,098 sanctioned judge positions as of November 2021, a vacancy rate of roughly 37 percent, with vacancy rates running between 33 and 38 percent across the 2010 to 2020 period generally, and individual courts including Telangana, Patna, and Calcutta running vacancy rates above 50 percent at various points. More recent figures reported by The Tribune show specific courts still significantly understaffed as of 2025, including the Allahabad High Court with 79 of 160 sanctioned judges filled, facing a backlog of 2.7 lakh pending criminal appeals alone.
The Collegium-Government Standoff
Beyond the vacancy numbers themselves, a recurring friction point has been delay: the government sitting on collegium recommendations for extended periods before acting on them. As of 2025, according to Tribune India’s reporting, 29 collegium recommendations made since November 2022 remained pending with the central government, prompting the Supreme Court itself to state that the government “needs to act… expeditiously.” Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal separately told Parliament, according to Deccan Herald’s coverage, that the collegium itself had yet to recommend names for 191 existing High Court vacancies plus 45 anticipated future ones, indicating the appointment bottleneck runs in both directions, the collegium and the government each contributing to delays at different stages.
Notable Individual Appointments
No woman has yet served as Chief Justice of India. Justice B.V. Nagaratna, who has served on the Supreme Court since 2021 after previously serving as a Karnataka High Court judge, is projected to become India’s first woman Chief Justice, with a tenure expected to run from September 2027, according to ETV Bharat’s reporting, though her appointment falls after the period covered by data available at the time of writing. Only 11 women have served on the Supreme Court in its entire history since 1950, with two currently sitting on the bench. The Chief Justices who have served during Modi’s tenure include H.L. Dattu, T.S. Thakur, J.S. Khehar, who authored the key NJAC ruling, Dipak Misra, Ranjan Gogoi, S.A. Bobde, N.V. Ramana, U.U. Lalit, D.Y. Chandrachud, Sanjiv Khanna, B.R. Gavai, and the current Chief Justice, Surya Kant, who took office in November 2025.
Why So Many Chief Justices in One Decade
The unusually high number of Chief Justices across this single decade, twelve individuals holding the post between 2014 and 2026, reflects the Indian system’s fixed retirement age of 65 for Supreme Court judges combined with a strict seniority-based convention for appointing the next Chief Justice, meaning tenures in the top post are frequently quite short, sometimes just months, depending purely on how close a given judge already was to retirement age when their turn arrived by seniority, rather than reflecting any unusual instability in the institution itself.
Bottom Line
Judicial appointments under Modi‘s government have been shaped substantially by the 2015 Supreme Court ruling striking down the government’s own NJAC law and restoring the collegium system, alongside a persistent pattern of High Court vacancies running in the range of 33 to 38 percent for much of this period and recurring, still-unresolved friction over delayed action on collegium recommendations from both sides of the process.
Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available Supreme Court and PRS Legislative Research data and news reports listed below. It is written for general informational purposes and does not represent an official statement from the Government of India, the Supreme Court of India, or the Ministry of Law and Justice.
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