Examine the process of appointment and elevation of judges from High Courts to the Supreme Court of India, citing constitutional provisions.

Article 124(2) vests the appointment of Supreme Court judges in the President, but decades of judicial interpretation have shifted the decisive voice to the judiciary itself. Examining the process means separating its constitutional text from its actual working.

Constitutional provisions

• Article 124(2): judges appointed by the President after consultation with the CJI and such judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts as the President deems necessary [1].
• Article 124(3): eligibility — five years as a High Court judge, ten years as a High Court advocate, or a distinguished jurist [1].
• Allied provisions: Article 217 (High Court judges), Article 222 (transfer), Article 224 (additional judges) [1]; sanctioned strength is 34 under the Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Act, 1956 [1].

The process in practice

• The Second (1993) and Third (1998) Judges cases read "consultation" as primacy of the CJI's collegium, operationalised through the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP), 1998 [2].
• The collegium — CJI plus four senior-most judges — recommends elevation, weighing seniority, merit and High Court representation; the Union Government may return a name once, but a reiterated recommendation binds [2].
• The NJAC was struck down on 16.10.2015, restoring the collegium [2]. Justice M.M. Sundresh illustrates the ladder: Additional Judge, Madras High Court (2009) → permanent judge (2011) → Supreme Court (2021) [3].

Concerns in its working

• The MoP fixes no outer time limit for government clearance; the Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice (2020) found 35–40% of High Court posts unfilled every year [4].
• Vacancy in High Courts stood at 37% — 406 of 1,098 posts — as on 1 November 2021 [4], feeding a pendency of over four crore cases [5].
• Criticism persists over opacity of criteria and limited social diversity.

The process thus balances judicial independence against accountability, but its silence on timelines weakens both. Writing binding timelines into the MoP, initiating recommendations six months before a vacancy arises [4], and publishing objective selection criteria would make the collegium both faster and more credible — strengthening the independent judiciary that the Constitution's basic structure protects.