11 sworn in as Additional Judges at Punjab and Haryana High Court

The eleven new judges — Nidhi Gupta, Sanjay Vashisth, Tribhuvan Dahiya, Namit Kumar, Harkesh Manuja, Aman Chaudhary, Naresh Singh, Harsh Bunger, Jagmohan Bansal, Deepak Manchanda, and Alok Jain — were administered oath by Ravi Shanker Jha, the Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court.

The swearing-in ceremony of the new Judges was held at the High Court auditorium, and was attended by other judges of the High Court.

The names of all the 11 advocates were cleared by the SC collegium for elevation in a meeting held on July 25 this year. The proposal for elevation was then forwarded by the High Court collegium in March this year to the Supreme Court, which in turn cleared and forwarded the names to the Union Law Ministry for final approval.

After the 11 new appointments, the total number of judges at the Punjab and Haryana High Court now stands at 57, against a sanctioned strength of 85.

Sikhs ignored, claims SAD chief Badal, writes to PM

Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal on Tuesday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene over the “omission of members of the Sikh community” in the latest list of advocates appointed additional judges of the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

In a letter to the PM, the Shiromani Akali Dal president said, “I am confident that you will be concerned that not a single member from the Sikh community has been chosen for elevation,” “This has caused immense dismay as this comes at a time when there is not a single Sikh judge in the Supreme Court,” he said.

Badal said there was no dearth of Sikh and other Punjabi legal luminaries who had distinguished themselves in serving the society. “Such able personalities should be considered for elevation to the top courts of the country, including the Punjab and Haryana High Court,” he said urging the prime minister to personally intervene in the matter and rectify the situation.

Telling the prime minister that a wrong message has been sent to the nationalistic Sikh community with their omission from top judicial appointments, Badal said the community has contributed the most to the freedom struggle as well as guarding the frontiers of the country.

“The Sikh community has given the nation revolutionaries like Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh. As many as 121 members of the Sikh community have kissed the gallows in the fight for freedom. As many as 2,147 Sikhs were interred at Kala Pani (Andaman and Nicobar islands) from among the total 2,646 inmates incarcerated there as part of their life sentence. All this is a matter of record,” he wrote.

Badal also informed the PM that besides the issue of judicial appointments, Punjabis had been severely victimised in the past.
“We are the only ones who do not have their own capital; we don’t have right over our waters as per the riparian principle and have lost our Punjabi speaking areas at the time of reorganisation of the State,” he said.

“We have also been adversely affected because our neighbours were given special economic packages,” he said requesting the prime minister to take up all pending issues including that of judicial appointments sympathetically.

(With PTI inputs)