Few judicial officers make it to High Courts despite training and decades of experience

The elevation of seven district judges to the Delhi High Court last week has once again drawn attention to the narrow path from the subordinate judiciary to the higher Bench, where judicial officers account for only a fraction of the judges despite spending decades deciding cases at the trial-court level.

Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya administered the oath of office to Justices Nivedita Anil Sharma, Nisha Sahay Saxena, Sanjay Sharma, Bharat Parashar, Aditi Choudhary, Dinesh Bhatt, and Arun Bhardwaj. With these appointments, the Delhi High Court’s working strength rose to 50 against a sanctioned strength of 60, with 19 judges having climbed the ranks from the subordinate courts.

While Article 217 of the Constitution provides two distinct streams for High Court appointments, members of the Bar and judicial officers, it prescribes no fixed numerical ratio between them. However, a conventional norm has long dictated that two-thirds (66.67%) of vacancies are drawn from the Bar, while only one-third (33.33%) for the judicial service cadre.

History of judicial services

The genesis of this skewed ratio traces back to historical evolution said retired Justice R.K. Gauba, who rose from the subordinate cadre to serve on the Delhi High Court bench. “If we go back in history, the British rulers, they were not interested in Diwani (civil) courts,” Justice Gauba said speaking to The Hindu.

He explained the structural shift following Independence. “Under colonial rule, magisterial courts were predominantly manned by Indian Civil Service (ICS) officers, focused heavily on criminal (Faujdari) administration. The framers of our Constitution mandated a clear separation of the executive from the judiciary, which led to the creation of independent state Judicial Services,” he said.

“As the grassroots judiciary developed, logic dictated providing a structured career path up the ladder. With two constitutional sources, the cake ought to have been divided equally, 50-50, if not more for the judicial service given their vast bench experience,” Justice Gauba noted.

Justice Gauba traced the persistence of the one-third norm to an observation made by the Supreme Court during a pension dispute case filed by retired judge Justice Kuldip Singh. Though the core issue was pension parity rather than service distribution, a Bench headed by Justice B.N. Kirpal in 2002 observed that the share of judicial service appointments was traditionally one-third. “And it has stuck ever since without substantive justification,” he said.

Career bottleneck

Most law graduates join the judicial service as Civil Judges in their late twenties. From there, it’s a slow climb. It usually takes about 10 years to become a Senior Civil Judge, and another decade to reach the rank of District and Sessions Judge. By the time an officer enters the zone of consideration for High Court elevation, they are often in their late fifties, leaving them with a fleeting tenure before reaching the mandatory retirement age.

This progression bottleneck also severely restricts their presence in the Supreme Court. The current composition of the Supreme Court includes no sitting judges who began their careers in the trial court judiciary. The last such appointment was Justice Bela M. Trivedi in August 2021, who retired in June 2025.

Service quota remains below one-third in most High Courts

Data available with the Department of Justice reveals that as of September 1, 2026, the one-third figure is generally not achieved. Across the country’s sanctioned strength of 1,114 High Court judges, only 233 officers elevated from the district judiciary are currently in office.

While a few jurisdictions like Tripura (40%), Himachal Pradesh (35.29%), and Delhi (31.67%) exceed or come close to the benchmark, several major states lag far behind. Service judges constitute just 9.09% in Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh, 11.90% in Telangana, 15.15% in Orissa, and 17.02% in Bombay HC. Sikkim currently stands at zero percent service representation.

The demand to increase the ratio is not new

Though previous Chief Justices’ Conferences in 1993 and 2006 deliberated expanding the quota to 40% or 50%, nothing has come out of it.

More recently, an application was moved by the Judicial Service Association of Delhi before the Supreme Court seeking a direction to fill up 50% of the seats in the High Court from the service quota.

However, in the order passed on April 25, 2023, a Bench of Justices B.R. Gavai, Vikram Nath and Sanjay Karol said it was “not inclined to consider the prayer, leaving it open to the applicants to pursue the remedies before such forum as is permissible in law”.

The Bench had asked the High Courts to recommend names from the service cadre before vacancies arose, noting that service judges often had only a few years of tenure in the High Courts.

Attracting top talent

Former Principal District & Sessions Judge Pawan Kumar Jain speaking to The Hindu emphasized that the lack of clear career progression discourages top law graduates from joining the lower judiciary. “If after serving 20 to 30 years one fails to reach the High Court at a reasonable age, the system will fail to attract brilliant minds. The institution must prioritize the litigant and fill vacancies efficiently,” Mr. Jain stated.

Justice Gauba further argued that filling High Court vacancies from the service cadre is significantly faster and less vulnerable to external pressures than Bar appointments.

“With judicial officers, performance appraisals, integrity reports, and decades of judgment records are already available. Recommendations can be processed months in advance without leaving vacancies open for years. By reserving a disproportionate share for the Bar, we are ultimately depriving citizens of judges who are trained, experienced, and ready to deliver prompt justice,” he added.