Supreme Court Collegium Moves Towards a Clear Policy for Transferring High Court Judges
The five-member Supreme Court collegium, led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and including Justices Vikram Nath, B V Nagarathna, M M Sundresh and P S Narasimha, held an informal discussion on a written policy for transferring High Court judges from one High Court to another.
Till now, transfers have followed unwritten practices. The collegium members felt that "random" or pick-and-choose transfers, done for reasons that are not objective, should be dropped.
Transfers happen for many reasons: preparing a senior judge to become Chief Justice of a High Court, using a judge's special expertise in another court, easing friction between senior judges, or acting on complaints about a judge's integrity or conduct confirmed by an in-house inquiry.
The collegium recommended the transfer of 18 High Court judges in 2022, 34 in 2023, 11 in 2024, 44 in 2025 and 12 in 2026 so far.
The new framework may also deal with transfer recommendations that the Union government has not acted on, some of which have stayed pending for years.
One view being considered is that a judge facing complaints should first be asked by the Chief Justice of the High Court to correct their conduct within a fixed time, before the collegium uses a transfer.
Transfer of High Court Judges (Article 222)
India has 25 High Courts. Article 222 of the Constitution allows the President to move a judge from one High Court to another, after consulting the Chief Justice of India. In practice, the President acts on the recommendation of the Supreme Court collegium, which is the CJI and the four senior-most judges of the Supreme Court. A transferred judge does not lose seniority or pay, and is entitled to an extra allowance to cover the cost of moving.
The collegium's plan to write down a transfer policy is an attempt to fix the main weakness of Article 222 in practice: transfers decided case by case, without stated criteria. A clear policy could reduce charges of favouritism and punitive transfers. It may also give the collegium a formal way to deal with recommendations that the government has left pending.
Collegium System and Judicial Appointments
The collegium system is the way judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts are chosen and transferred in India. A small group of the senior-most judges, called the collegium, selects names and sends them to the government. The President then formally appoints or transfers them. The system is not written in the Constitution; it was created by the Supreme Court through the Judges Cases of 1981, 1993 and 1998.
The same five-member collegium that recommends appointments also decides transfers. Its discussion on a written transfer policy is an effort to make one of its least transparent functions more objective and accountable.
- Supreme Court collegium (November 2026): CJI Surya Kant, Justices Vikram Nath, B V Nagarathna, M M Sundresh, P S Narasimha
- High Court judges recommended for transfer: 18 (2022), 34 (2023), 11 (2024), 44 (2025), 12 (2026 so far)
- Article 222: transfer of a High Court judge by the President after consulting the CJI
- Transfer collegium: CJI plus four senior-most Supreme Court judges (Third Judges Case, 1998)
- Number of High Courts in India: 25
- Until 2018, collegium transfer resolutions used the phrase "in the interest of better administration of justice"; by 2020 this wording was dropped