The Supreme Court collegium, comprising top five judges, has recommended transfer of Madras High Court Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee to the Meghalaya High Court. It has also made another recommendation to the Centre to transfer Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari from Allahabad High Court to the Madras High Court.
Resolutions for both the recommendations were passed by the collegium on September 16 but were made available in the public domain only on Tuesday (November 9). Chief Justice Banerjee, hailing from West Bengal, had assumed office in the Madras High Court on January 4, 2021 and is due to retire from service on November 1, 2023.
A similar recommendation made by the Supreme Court in 2019 to transfer the then Madras High Court Chief Justice Vijaya Kamlesh Tahilramani to the much smaller Meghalaya High Court had created a furore among the legal fraternity. When her plea for reconsideration was rejected, Justice Tahilramani chose to put in her papers.
Justice Bhandari, who had been recommended to be transferred to the Madras High Court, actually hails from Rajasthan. He was transferred to the Allahabad High Court on March 15, 2019 and is due to retire from service on September 12, 2022. He is now the senior most judge of Allahabad High Court and had been its Acting Chief Justice too between June 26, 2021 and October 10, 2021.
