Centre to launch all-India judicial service: Moily

Target to fill vacancies in HCs and lower courts

Speaking to Deccan Herald, Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily said the government would launch the Indian Judicial Service soon to fill up 25 per cent of the posts in lower judiciary in the states.

There are eight vacancies out of 31 sanctioned strength in the Supreme Court, 234 out of 886 sanctioned posts of high court judges and 2,998 out of 16,721 posts in the lower judiciary till June 2009, according to the Supreme Court.

The total backlog of pending cases in the country amounts to about 3.12 crore cases—Supreme Court - 52,592; high courts - 40,17,956 and lower courts - 2,71,19,092.
“The candidates recruited by either the UPSC or a new recruitment agency, either join as district judges or additional district judges,” said Moily, explaining his 100-day plan submitted to the prime minister.

“If they join as district judges at a young age of 24 or 25, they will have a bright future to rise up to the Supreme Court justice level,” he said, adding that the Indian Judicial Service officers would make it to the high court at a very early stage. At least 25 per cent of the high court judges are from state judicial services. But none of them make it to the SC as they join at the magistrate level, the minister said.

Asked how young and bright law graduates could be attracted to the judicial service, Moily said the new scheme would be an all India service with bright prospects. Quoting Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan, he said bright students preferred corporate law firms to the bench for money. Owing to low salary in the judicial service, several states fail to find bright candidates. During a recent hearing in the Supreme Court, a bench comprising Justices B N Agrawal and G S Singhvi observed that bright students from law schools were joining law firms and multi-national companies. Narrating an incident, the bench said a state could not even find 10 candidates out of 3,000 applicants for the judicial service.