The latest Statement showing the Approved strength, Working Strength and Vacancies of Judges in the Supreme Court of India and the High Courts, released by the Department of Justice, Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India, shows that as many as 392 positions of High Court judges are vacant as on 1st September 2015 from out of approved strength of 1017 judges. This comes to about 38.5% vacancies. Moreover, as many as 8 High Courts from out of a total of 24 High Courts in India do not have regular Chief Justices and they have “officiating” or “acting” chief justices (this figure includes, Bombay high court, where the post of chief justice became vacant on 9th September 2015).
The vacancy position in judiciary has always been bad due to inefficient process of appointing judges. However, it has never perhaps been worse in the past as it is today. This is courtesy the controversy over the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) – the new system to appoint judges in place of the previous Collegium system – over which several writ petitions were filed in the Supreme Court and a Constitution bench of the Supreme Court completed hearing the arguments exactly two months back on 15 July 2015, and is yet to pronounce its verdict (see: Supreme Court Constitution Bench NJAC validity issue hearing completed and judgment reserved).
Moreover, it is more or less certain that the decision of the 5-judge Constitution bench, comprising of Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar, Justice J. Chelameswar, Justice Madan B. Lokur, Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel, will not be the last word on the NJAC issue, since its judgment (as and when it comes, and whatever be its outcome) is likely to be challenged before a larger bench of the Supreme Court, and probably it may ultimately land with an 11-judge bench of the Supreme Court in view of the fact that previous judgments of the Supreme Court on the Collegium system, which has been replaced by the NJAC system, were delivered by 9-judge benches. So, the vacancies position is not going to be improved in the near future.
At present, following 8 high courts have only acting chief justices:
| S.No. | High Court | Acting Chief Justice |
| 1. | Hyderabad | Justice Dilip Babasaheb Bhosale |
| 2. | Bombay | Justice Justice Smt. Vijaya Kamlesh Tahilramani |
| 3. | Gauhati | Justice K. Sreedhar Rao |
| 4. | Gujarat | Justice Jayant M. Patel |
| 5. | Karnataka | Justice Subhro Kamal Mukherjee |
| 6. | Patna | Justice Iqbal Ahmed Ansari |
| 7. | Punjab & Haryana | Justice Shiavax Jal Vazifdar |
| 8. | Rajasthan | Justice Ajit Singh |
Moreover, Allahabad high court has 85 vacancies, Bombay high court has 30 vacancies whereas Punjab & Haryana high court has 31 vacancies of judges as on 1st September 2015. Delhi, Madras, Gujarat and Rajasthan high courts have 20, 22, 24 and 24 vacancies of judges, respectively. Other high courts also have varying number of vacancies.
Supreme Court also has 3 vacancies of judges at present.
