Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty picked for Telangana High Court as Collegium names four new Chief Justices

Telangana is set to get a new Chief Justice from Kolkata. The Supreme Court Collegium, meeting on 26 October, recommended Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty of the Calcutta High Court to head the Telangana High Court, one of four Chief Justice appointments it cleared in a single sitting.

The vacancy in Hyderabad is three weeks old. Chief Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh was elevated to the Supreme Court on 5 October, and Justice P. Sam Koshy, the senior-most judge, has been discharging the Chief Justice’s duties since. The Collegium has now proposed Justice Koshy for the Delhi High Court, so Telangana will see both its acting head and its incoming head change once the government acts.

Who he is

Justice Chakraborty enrolled as an advocate in May 1991 and spent about 22 years in practice, almost all of it before the Calcutta High Court. He was appointed an additional judge of that court in October 2013 and confirmed as a permanent judge in March 2016. A transfer to Hyderabad as Chief Justice follows the usual convention that a High Court is led by a judge from outside the state.

The other two names from the meeting were Justice Manash Ranjan Pathak, who is already discharging the Chief Justice’s duties in Gujarat and will now be confirmed there, and Justice Sudhir Singh of the Patna High Court, recommended for Uttarakhand.

What happens next

A Collegium recommendation is not an appointment. The file goes to the Union Law Ministry, which forwards it to the Prime Minister and the President; the appointment takes effect when the President signs the warrant and the judge takes oath, usually a matter of weeks. Until then Justice Koshy continues as acting Chief Justice in Hyderabad.

The Telangana High Court, carved out of the common High Court for the two Telugu states in January 2019, has a sanctioned strength of 42 judges. The new Chief Justice will inherit the administrative task of filling its vacancies alongside the court’s regular docket of land, service and election matters.