Four new Supreme Court judges take oath

Four new judges took the charge in Supreme Court on Monday after being administered the oath of office by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi.

With this, the overall strength of judges in the top court reached to the sanctioned number of 34, the highest ever in the history of the top court.

The swearing in ceremony of Justices Krishna Murari, S Ravindra Bhat, V Ramasubramanian and Hrishikesh Roy took place inside the Chief Justice's courtroom, amid presence of all other sitting judges of the top court and lawyers and family members of newly-appointed judges.

Soon after the ceremony, the four judges are going to participate in different benches and hear the listed cases.

Before their elevations, Justice Murari was the Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Justice Bhat, Chief Justice of the Rajasthan HC, Justice Ramasubramanian, Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh and Justice Roy, Chief Justice of the Kerala HC.

Justice Murari, who stood at serial number five in combined seniority of High Court judges, hailed from Allahabad High Court.

Justice Bhat, who originally belonged to the Delhi High Court, stood at serial number 12 in the combined seniority of high court judges on all-India basis.

Justice Ramasubramanian is from Madras HC. He stood at number 42 in the combined seniority. Roy was from Gauhati HC and was at number 46 in the seniority list.

The top court is currently working with a strength of 30 judges out of a sanctioned strength of 34.

Earlier, the court had a sanctioned strength of only 31 judges, but on August 10, the Centre raised the number by three more to make it 34.