Karnataka High Court Gets Three Additional Judges

Three judicial officers, Usharani, Kuruba Shanthappa Bharath Kumar and Neralé Veerabhadraiah Bhavani, have been appointed Additional Judges of the Karnataka High Court, according to the notification.

Additional Judges are appointed to the High Court for an initial fixed term, typically two years, with confirmation as permanent judges dependent on subsequent performance and Collegium recommendation. The appointments come as High Courts across the country, including Karnataka's, continue to carry substantial case pendency, making additional judicial strength a recurring administrative priority. The Karnataka High Court, which sits at Bengaluru with benches at Dharwad and Kalaburagi, has repeatedly flagged the gap between its sanctioned judge strength and its working strength in its own administrative reports over recent years.

All three appointees rise from the subordinate judiciary or the bar, the two customary routes to a High Court judgeship, with district judiciary elevations typically drawn from officers who have served at the district and sessions court level for a defined minimum period set by the judiciary's own eligibility norms. Bar elevations, by contrast, are drawn from practising advocates who meet a separate set of eligibility criteria tied to years of practice before the High Court, and the mix of both routes among the three appointees reflects the customary balance the Collegium tries to maintain when recommending names.

The appointments follow a Collegium recommendation process in which the Karnataka High Court's own Collegium first proposes names, which then move through the Supreme Court Collegium and the Union Law Ministry before the formal notification is issued. This process typically takes several months from the initial recommendation to the final notification, with the Law Ministry conducting its own background verification before forwarding names for the President's approval.

The addition of three judges comes as part of a broader, ongoing effort to bring High Court judge strength closer to sanctioned capacity, a gap that has persisted across most High Courts despite periodic rounds of appointments through the year. Karnataka's sanctioned strength has periodically been revised upward as the state's litigation volume, particularly in commercial and land-related disputes, has grown alongside its economic profile.

The three will be assigned to civil, criminal or writ benches based on the Chief Justice's roster once they are sworn in, adding capacity to a court that, like most High Courts, allocates judges across multiple jurisdictions to manage caseload across original and appellate matters, including a significant volume of writ petitions tied to administrative and service-law disputes.

The appointments were notified this week, with the three Additional Judges expected to be sworn in shortly after.