CHENNAI: Reducing the number of vacancies in the Madras High Court to 9, President Droupadi Murmu appointed 15 new judges, including former Registrar General S Alli.
The May 18 meeting of the Supreme Court Collegium had recommended 19 names, of whom 15 have been appointed.
The eight advocates appointed as judges are Rajnish Pathiyil, Natarajan Ramesh (both of whom were appearing for ED in various cases), Krishnaswamy Govindarajan, GK Muthukumaar, Ramakrishnan Rajesh Vivekananthan, Sankaranarayanan Raveekumar, Nagarajan Dilip Kumar, and Ellappan Manoharan.
The seven district judges who were elevated are S Alli, Dr P Murugan, MD Sumathi, Shanmugam Karthikeyan, Baluchamy Murugesan, N Gunasekaran, and Thirumagal Chandrasekar. Of them, Alli was the Registrar General before retiring two months ago (the retirement age for RG is 60 while that of judges is 62). Alli was also the judge who had initially heard the ED case against senior DMK leader V Senthilbalaji.
The HC, which has a sanctioned strength of 75 judges, now has 66 judges.