On May 13, the Union Government notified the appointment of nine advocates as judges of the Delhi high court. Of them, three are women. This increases the high court’s current working strength to 44 judges against the sanctioned strength of 60 judges. The newly appointed judges are Tara Vitasta Ganju, Mini Pushkarna, Vikas Mahajan, Tushar Rao Gedela, Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora, Sachin Datta, Amit Mahajan, Gaurang Kanth and Saurabh Banerjee. Except for Ganju and Pushkarna, the remaining seven advocates were recommended for elevation by the Supreme Court Collegium recently on May 4. Both Ganju and Pushkarna were recommended for elevation almost two years ago. Policy of cherry-picking Collegium recommendations for appointments to Delhi high court The Union government has continued with its practice of cherry-picking names recommended by the Supreme Court Collegium for appointments to the Delhi high court.On August 17, 2020, the Collegium had recommended the names of advocates Jasmeet Singh, Amit Bansal, Tara Vitasta Ganju, Anish Dayal, Amit Sharma and Mini Pushkarna. Of them, Singh and Bansal were appointed as judges of the high court in February last year. The Union government had sought reconsideration of the remaining four names.On November 11 last year, the Collegium rejected the Union government’s objections and reiterated those four names for appointment as Delhi high court judges. On Friday, the government, though notifying the names of Ganju and Pushkarna after an inexplicable delay, continued to hold back the names of senior advocates Dayal and Sharma. Since the appointment of Justices Singh and Bansal, the Delhi high court got six more judges following the Collegium’s recommendations. This has lowered the seniority of advocates Dayal and Sharma, if they are appointed as judges in the future, against Justices Neena Bansal Krishna, Dinesh Kumar Sharma, Anoop Kumar Mendiratta and Sudhir Kumar Jain, who were appointed on February 28 this year; against Justices Poonam A. Bamba and Swarana Kanta Sharma, who were appointed on March 24; and against the nine newly appointed judges, except for Justice Ganju, who was already senior to Dayal and Sharmaa in the Collegium recommendation.