Three high court chief justices join the Supreme Court, taking strength to 37

Three high court chief justices took oath as judges of the Supreme Court at 3.30 pm on Wednesday, lifting the court's working strength to 37 against a sanctioned 38. Justice Sunita Agarwal, until now chief justice of the Gujarat High Court, became the third woman on the bench, beside Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Mohana.

The other two new judges are Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya, chief justice of the Delhi High Court, and Aparesh Kumar Singh, chief justice of the Telangana High Court. All three moved straight from the chief justiceship of a high court. The collegium that recommended them was led by Chief Justice Surya Kant. An afternoon oath is unusual. The court more often swears judges in the morning, before boards. Wednesday's timing put the three on the bench the same day the appointments were being read in the papers.

Agarwal began as a judge of the Allahabad High Court and has been chief justice in Gujarat since July 2023. Her oath ends a stretch in which Nagarathna was the only woman on the court, after Justice Bela M. Trivedi retired in May 2025. Justice Hima Kohli had retired in September 2024. Justice Indira Banerjee had retired in September 2022. For a little over a year, from August 2021 to September 2022, four women sat together: Banerjee, Kohli, Nagarathna and Trivedi. That remains the high mark. Three out of 37 is 8 percent. The sanctioned strength of 38 would not change that share even if the last seat went to a woman, which it has not.

The vacancy arithmetic is already moving. One seat stays empty after Wednesday. Justice Satish Chandra Sharma is due to retire in November. If no further oath is taken before then, the court will be two short of 38. Collegium recommendations do not convert into appointments on a fixed clock. The gap between a resolution and a warrant has, in recent years, run from days to months, depending on the file the government returns and the file it clears. Wednesday's three names cleared. The November retirement is the next date that forces a choice.

Who arrives matters beyond the headcount. Chief justices of Gujarat, Delhi and Telangana bring three different dockets. Delhi's chief justice has sat on the court's heaviest public-law list, including election and administrative challenges that often climb to the Supreme Court within weeks. Gujarat's chief justice has handled a commercial and criminal list from a large bar. Telangana's chief justice has run a newer high court, created in 2019, whose senior judges are still building the institutional memory older courts take for granted. None of that predicts how they will vote. It does predict the kind of high court order they have spent the last two years correcting or confirming.

The women count is the figure headlines will keep, and it is the figure that has moved least. India has had a woman on the Supreme Court since Justice Fathima Beevi in 1989. It has never had a woman chief justice. Nagarathna is in line by seniority for a short tenure as chief justice in 2027, if the seniority convention holds. Agarwal's arrival does not change that line. It changes the chance that a woman judge is in the room when a bench is assembled on a given morning. With one woman, random assignment often produced an all-male bench. With three, the odds shift, not because of a quota, but because three names are harder to miss than one.

The sanctioned strength itself is new enough to need a sentence. Parliament raised the ceiling to 34 in 2019, and later revisions have taken the authorised number to 38. A court of that size splits into many small benches. The chief justice's power is the power to choose which three or two sit on which case. Adding three judges on one afternoon widens the pool he can draw from. It does not, by itself, speed the constitutional bench matters that have waited years. Those move when five or seven judges are pulled off the daily list, which is a roster decision, not a vacancy decision.

Wednesday's record is therefore narrow and checkable. Three chief justices sworn at 3.30 pm. Strength 37 of 38. Women judges: Nagarathna, Mohana, Agarwal. Next forced vacancy: Satish Chandra Sharma in November. The collegium that sent the names sits under Surya Kant. What the warrants do not say is which bench each new judge will join on Thursday morning.