Before his appointment as a judge of the Supreme Court of India in July 2024, Justice N. Kotiswar Singh was the Chief Justice of which High Court ?

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Correct — B, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court. The Supreme Court's own record of Justice N. Kotiswar Singh's career settles this precisely. Born at Imphal, he graduated from Kirori Mal College, Delhi University, took his law degree at the Campus Law Centre in 1986, served as Advocate General of Manipur from 3 November 2007, and was designated a Senior Advocate by the Gauhati High Court in 2008. He was sworn in as an Additional Judge of the Gauhati High Court on 17 October 2011 and confirmed on 7 November 2012, moved to the newly created Manipur High Court with effect from 23 March 2013, returned to the Gauhati High Court on 11 October 2018, and was elevated as Chief Justice of the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh on 15 February 2023. He was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of India on 18 July 2024 — reported at the time as the first judge from Manipur to reach the Court. So the post he held immediately before elevation was Chief Justice of the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, which is option (b). The reason option (c) is so tempting is that he genuinely did head the Gauhati High Court, three separate times, but only in an officiating capacity — from 21 September 2020 to 9 January 2021, from 9 May 2022 to 22 June 2022, and from 12 January 2023 until his elevation to Jammu and Kashmir. Performing the duties of the office of Chief Justice is not the same as being appointed Chief Justice, and this stem asks for the substantive post.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) There is a real reason this option is here, and it is worth knowing. Justice R. Mahadevan took oath as a judge of the Supreme Court on the very same day, 18 July 2024, and he had been the acting Chief Justice of the Madras High Court since 24 May 2024. Anyone who has half-remembered that pair of appointments can attach the wrong court to the wrong judge.  (c) The strongest distractor, and true in a weaker sense. Justice Kotiswar Singh began his judicial career at the Gauhati High Court in 2011 and performed the duties of its Chief Justice on three occasions between 2020 and 2023 — but as an officiating head, never as the appointed Chief Justice. His substantive Chief Justiceship was at Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.  (d) A pure decoy with no link to his career, which ran through the north-east and then Srinagar and Jammu. It is on the list because Bombay is one of the three chartered High Courts and the name comes readily to mind on any judiciary question.

Concept: Article 214 of the Constitution provides a High Court for each State, but Article 231 lets Parliament establish one common High Court for two or more States or Union Territories, which is why the map of High Courts does not simply mirror the map of States. The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir illustrates the point: after the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019 split the State into the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and of Ladakh, it became the common High Court for both and was subsequently renamed the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Judges of a High Court are appointed by the President under Article 217, and of the Supreme Court under Article 124, in both cases on recommendations made through the collegium — the Chief Justice of India with the four seniormost judges of the Supreme Court for elevations to that Court — a system that grew out of the Second and Third Judges cases of 1993 and 1998 rather than from any statute. The Supreme Court's sanctioned strength is 34, the Chief Justice of India plus 33 other judges.

State PCS 2024 Q48 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q48 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer