No plan to hike retirement age of Supreme Court, High Court Judges: Government

New Delhi: On a day the issue of vacancies in higher judiciary came up for hearing in the Supreme Court, the government today informed the Rajya Sabha that it has no plans to hike the retirement age of top court and high court judges.

"No sir," was the reply of Minister of State for Law PP Chaudhary in the Upper House to a question on whether the government is mulling increasing the age of superannuation for the judges of the Supreme Court and the 24 high courts.

While Supreme Court judges retire at 65 years, the high court judges retire at 62.

In his written reply, Mr Chaudhary also ruled out plans to reduce the age limit to 42 years from the present 45 for appointing judges to the high courts.

The salaries of judges will be hiked as per the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission, he said.

On Wednesday, Mr Chaudhary had informed the Lok Sabha that a UPA bill which sought to increase the retirement age of high court Judges from 62 to 65 years had lapsed following the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha. He, however, was silent on a question on whether the present government would bring afresh bill.

As on November 15, the Supreme Court has five vacancies and the high courts, 427. A total of nearly 3.10 crore cases are pending across India, including 61,436 in the apex court, 38.70 lakh in the high courts and 2.70 crore in lower courts.

Newsletter

Prime Minister Modi inaugurates Atal Tunnel - longest tunnel above 10000 ft

Ladakh: The Prime Minister today inaugurated the Atal Tunnel and took the inaugural drive through in the 9km long tunnel...

Orissa High Court Order regarding migrant workers entry into Orissa put on hold by the Supreme Court

The Orissa High Court order to permit the entry of migrant workers only if they tested Negative for COVID-19 was put on...

Coronavirus Lockdown - First Flights To Bring Back Indians Stranded Abroad Land In Kerala

On Monday, the central government announced plans to begin a massive repatriation of its citizens stranded abroad, dubbe...

Reacting to Trump's retaliation threat India allows Hydroxychloroquine export

In a move after Trump's threat to retaliate if India fails to send medicines, India has lifted ban of export of ess...

All Domestic Passenger Flights Suspended from Midnight Tomorrow

The operations of all domestic schedule commercial airlines will stop operations from 23.59pm on March 24, a government...

Iran says it ‘unintentionally’ shot down Ukrainian plane, blames ‘human error’

Iran had denied for several days that a missile downed the aircraft. But then the US and Canada, citing intelligence, sa...