Supreme Court approves appointment of five retired judges as ad-hoc judges

New Delhi: The Supreme Court Collegium on Tuesday approved the proposal for the appointment of five retired judges as ad-hoc judges of the Allahabad High Court for two years in terms of Article 224-A of the Constitution.

Those judges are Justices Mohd Faiz Alam Khan, Mohd Aslam, Syed Aftab Husain Rizvi, Renu Agarwal and Jyotsna Sharma,

The rarely used Article 224A of the Constitution deals with the appointment of ad-hoc judges in high courts and says "The Chief Justice of a High Court for any State may at any time, with the previous consent of the President, request any person who has held the office of a Judge of that Court or of any other High Court to sit and act as a Judge of the High Court for that State".

The Collegium, headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, held its meeting on Tuesday.

In April 2021, terming the pendency of around 57 lakh cases in high courts as "docket explosion", the top court had activated a "dormant" constitutional provision to pave the way for the appointment of retired high court judges as ad-hoc ones for a period of two to three years to clear backlog, and came out with guidelines to regulate appointments.

On January 30, 2025, the court had allowed the high courts to appoint ad-hoc judges, not exceeding 10 per cent of the court's total sanctioned strength.