President appoints 15 new judges to Madras high court

New Delhi: The President on Thursday appointed 15 candidates, nine from the Bar and six from the subordinate judiciary as judges of the Madras high court. They are advocates:  V. Parthiban, R. Subramanian, M. Govindaraj, M. Sundar, R. Suresh Kumar, Smt. Nisha Banu, M.S. Ramesh,  S.M. Subramaniam, and  Dr Anita Sumanth. District Judges: M. Basheer Ahamed, T. Ravindran, S. Baskaran, P. Velmurugan, Dr. G. Jayachandran, and C.V. Karthikeyan, in that order of seniority.

This is the first batch of candidates cleared by the President and the remaining nine persons approved by the Supreme Court collegium headed by the Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur are to be  appointed shortly as the Union Law Ministry has sought more details from the intelligence bureau in respect of few candidates.

The Madras high court collegium sent a list of 30 names, 19 from the bar and 11 from among district judges in February this year. The names were pending consideration for a long time as the Memorandum of Procedure for appointment of judges could not be finalized by the Government.

However, even as the MoP was being discussed with the Chief justice of India, the Law Ministry processed the names and sent to the collegium for its consideration. The collegium at its meeting on July 21cleared 24 names and rejected six others, which includes four lawyers and two district judges. The names were then sent to the Prime Minister's office for approval and it took nearly two months for the PMO to give its nod for the first list of 15 names.