Supreme Court presses states to lift district judges' retirement age to 62

The Supreme Court on 1 September told states and Union Territories to take a positive view of raising the retirement age of district judicial officers from 60 to 62. The bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana is hearing the long-running All India Judges Association case. It listed the matter again for 17 September and told advocate generals from reluctant states to impress the point on their chief ministers.

District judges across India now retire at 60, a line that comes from the court's 1991 All India Judges Association judgment and took effect on 31 December 1992. High Court judges retire at 62. Supreme Court judges retire at 65. The gap is the whole case. A person who enters the judicial service after a law degree and a period of practice is already older than a typical state-service recruit. The bench said on Tuesday that the entry gap is at least three or four years, and that a two-year difference at the other end is therefore justified. It rejected the claim that the extra years would break state budgets.

Most High Courts have told the court they support 61 or 62. Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Sikkim and Puducherry are on the acceptable list, with Puducherry having cleared 61 and ready to look at 62. Assam, Bihar, Goa, Gujarat, Tripura, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh are still considering. Assam has said it can agree if the extra years are not then demanded by 4.5 lakh other government employees. That is the political knot. States fear a knock-on claim from every other cadre the moment judges get two more years.

The interim 61

In July the same bench had already asked states, after talking to their High Courts, to consider letting officers serve until 61 from 1 April 2026, pending a final ruling on a uniform 62. Where the state and the High Court both agree, the officer can stay. That stay is subject to the final judgment. The court was clear that the legal question of a national 62 will be decided on its own, whatever individual states say.

Tuesday's hearing moved from that interim device to a harder push. The oral direction to bring chief ministers into line is unusual in tone. It reflects a bench that has grown tired of affidavits that say the file is under consideration. The 17 September date is close enough to force a written stand from the undecided capitals before the next list.

Money is the argument states keep repeating and the argument the court keeps dismissing. A district judge who stays two more years is paid two more years of salary and then a slightly altered pension. Against that, the court sets the cost of empty courts and of officers who leave just as they have learned the district. The 1991 judgment already treated the judicial service as a separate constitutional category. Tuesday's remarks put that category back on the table and dared the states to keep comparing it with the secretariat.

What 17 September needs to show

Three documents will decide the next hearing. A list of states that have now said yes to 62. A list that still says no, with reasons that are not only fiscal. And a note from the High Courts that have not yet spoken. If the second list is still long, the court can either keep talking or write a direction that treats silence as consent. The July interim already pointed at the second path. The September calendar will show whether the bench is ready to take it.