NEW DELHI: Within a month of a vacancy caused by
retirement
of Justice Sanjay K Kaul, the 5-member
collegium
headed by CJI D Y Chandrachud on Friday recommended to the Union government to appoint
Karnataka HC
chief justice Prasanna Bhalchandra Varale as a judge of the
Supreme Court
.
When
Justice Varale
gets appointed to the Supreme Court, the
apex court
would get back to its full strength of 34 judges, including the CJI. Justice Varale’s
appointment
would increase the representation of the Schedule Caste community among Supreme Court judges to three, the other two being Justices B R Gavai and C T Ravikumar.
Justice Varale was the lone representative of the SC community among the CJs of the 25 HCs, and the collegium, also comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Gavai, Surya Kant and Aniruddha Bose, found him to be “deserving and suitable” for appointment as a judge of the highest court. Upon his appointment, Bombay HC’s representation in SC would increase to four, the other three being CJI Chandrachud, and Justices Gavai and A S Oka.
Justice Varale was appointed as a judge of Bombay HC on July 18, 2008 and was elevated as
CJ
of Karnataka HC on Oct 15, 2022. The collegium in its resolution said, “He is a competent judge with unimpeachable conduct and integrity and has throughout maintained a high standard of professional ethics.”
Before being appointed as a judge of Bombay HC, Varale had practised at the Bar for over 23 years in civil, criminal, labour and administrative law matters in district and sessions courts and in Constitutional matters at Bombay HC bench at Aurangabad.
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