Six Calcutta High Court Additional Judges Recommended for Fresh Six-Month Term

The Supreme Court Collegium has recommended a fresh six-month term for six Additional Judges of the Calcutta High Court, Justice Prasenjit Biswas, Justice Uday Kumar, Justice Ajay Kumar Gupta, Justice Supratim Bhattacharya, Justice Partha Sarathi Chatterjee and Justice Md. Shabbar Rashidi, according to a resolution issued this week.

Additional Judges in India's high courts are initially appointed for a fixed term, typically two years, and their continuation depends on periodic Collegium review before the government issues extension orders; a recommendation of this kind is a routine but necessary administrative step to keep sitting judges on the bench without a gap in their tenure that would otherwise interrupt part-heard matters assigned to them.

The Collegium's review of Additional Judges typically weighs judicial output, quality of judgments and conduct on the bench over the preceding term before recommending continuation, confirmation as a Permanent Judge, or in rarer cases, non-continuation. A six-month extension, shorter than the more common one or two-year renewal, suggests the Collegium intends a further, closer review of this particular batch in the near term rather than committing to a longer-term confirmation straightaway.

Calcutta High Court, one of India's oldest, tracing its origins to the Letters Patent of 1862, has a sanctioned strength of 72 judges, one of the largest among state high courts, reflecting the volume of civil, criminal and company-law litigation that flows through Kolkata and West Bengal's district courts. Additional Judges make up a meaningful share of that working strength at any given time, and the court has periodically operated well below its sanctioned number when vacancies and pending confirmations pile up.

The six judges named in this recommendation will continue to sit and hear cases without interruption while the government processes the formal extension order, a step that follows administratively once the Collegium's recommendation reaches the Law Ministry, since these are continuations of sitting judges rather than fresh appointments requiring the fuller vetting process applied to first-time elevations.

West Bengal's high court has periodically flagged pendency pressure in its commercial and writ jurisdiction benches, and continuity of its Additional Judges is treated as a priority precisely because any gap in their tenure would immediately reduce the court's working bench strength and disrupt cases already part-heard before them.

The Collegium's resolution was issued this week and the extension is expected to be formalised through a government notification in the coming weeks, keeping all six judges on the bench without interruption.