Nithyakalyani Narayanan. V
The Supreme Court held that the functions of District Judges were fundamentally the same as that of High Court judges and therefore the increase in the salary of the High Court judges must be proportionate to that of the District judges. The Court stated this in the case of accepting several recommendations of the Second National Judicial Pay Commission (SNJPC) regarding the pay, pension, gratuity, age of retirement etc. of judicial officers.
The Court also mentioned that the judges were not State employees but public office holders who had sovereign judicial power. Hence the judges were only comparable members of the legislature and the executive, and their pay could not be equated to executive staff. A timeline was provided for the Centre and States to pay retired judicial officers’ pensions, according to the updated pay scale.
The Court observed that “No longer should this Court refer to the District Judiciary as ‘subordinate judiciary. Not only is this a misnomer because the District Judge is not per se subordinate to any other person in the exercise of her jurisdiction but also is disrespectful to the constitutional position of a District Judge.” The Court also pointed out a previous order passed in April 2021 which dismissed Review Petitions against the directions for enhanced pension scale– “all Judges across the hierarchy of courts discharge the same essential function of adjudicating disputes impartially and independently”.
The judgment mentions that as per the hierarchy of the unified judicial system a Judge of the High Court is placed above a District Judge, it was only fair that a District Judge could not have more pay than a High Court judge. However, any increase in the salary of the judges of the High Court must also reflect in the same proportion to District judges.
Name of the Case: All India Judges Association v. Union On India and Ors. WP(C) No. 643/2015
Citation: 2023 (SC) 452
Bench: CJI. Dr. Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, J. V. Ramasubramanian and J. Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha.
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