Govt: No proposal to increase SC, HC judges’ retirement age

Subject :Polity

Section: Judiciary

Context: Recently Attorney General had stressed that the need to increase the retirement age of Judges.

Why increase retirement age?

Concept :

The idea of increasing the age of retirement for judges has been mooted for decades as a solution for dealing with mounting pendency of cases and judicial vacancies.
According to Article 124(2) of the Constitution, the age of retirement for Supreme Court judges is 65.
As per Article 217(1) of the Constitution, High Court judges retire at 62. Initially, the retirement age of High Court judges was 60, which was later in 1963 increased to 62 through the 114th constitutional amendment.
Article 124(7) of the Constitution bars judges of the Supreme Court from practicing before any forum,
while for High Court judges, an amendment was brought in 1956 to allow practice before the Supreme Court and High Courts other than the one they served in under Article 220
In 1974, the 58th report of the Law Commission recommended bringing parity between age of retirement of judges of High Court and Supreme Court.
In 2002, Justice Venkatachaliah Report – the report of National Commission to review the working of the Constitution – also recommended that the age of retirement should be increased for judges of High Courts and Supreme Court to 65 and 68, respectively.