Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra and senior advocate Kalpathy Venkataraman Viswanathan took oath as Supreme Court Judges

Chhattisgarh will get its first representation in the SC

New Delhi: On Friday Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra and senior advocate Kalpathy Venkataraman Viswanathan took oath as Supreme Court Judges, on the last working day of the court before summer recess. CJI D Y Chandrachud and the Union government completed the complex process of appointment in jet speed.

Justices Mishra and Viswanathan fill the two vacancies that arose from the retirement of Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and M R Shah on May 14 and 15 respectively. But the Collegium would have to commence deliberations for three more appointments to fill vacancies that will arise in June with the retirements of Justices K M Joseph (June 16), Ajay Rastogi (June 17) and V Ramasubramanian (June 29).

While the new Judges are being felicitated and assigned benches on Friday, the CJI held three separate ceremonial benches for Justices Joseph, Rastogi and Ramasubamanian to bid them adieu from the apex court with their retirements occurring during the court's summer recess.

Chhattisgarh will get its first representation in the SC through the appointment of justice Mishra, since the state was carved out of Madhya Pradesh in the year 2000. Justice Mishra became a Judge of Chhattisgarh HC on December 10, 2009, and was appointed as CJ of the Andhra Pradesh HC on October 13, 2021. Though his name figured at 21 in all India seniority list of Judges, the absence of the state's representation in the SC tilted the balance of selection in his favour.

From the bar to the bench there had been six elevations from July 2014 till date - Justices R F Nariman on July 7, 2014, U U Lalit on August 13, 2014 (who went on to become CJI on August 27, 2022, for 74 days), L N Rao on May 13, 2016, Indu Malhotra on April 27, 2018, P S Narasimha on August 31, 2021 and K V Viswanathan on Friday.