After its strained relation with the judiciary for a long time, the Centre has surprised Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi by taking a few hours to approve the Supreme Court Collegium’s recommendation to appoint four judges to the apex court. Justices Hemant Gupta, R Subhash Reddy, MR Shah and Ajay Rastogi were sworn in by the CJI on Friday two days after the SC Collegium sent its recommendation to the Law Ministry.

The CJI could not hide his surprise over the alacrity shown by the Centre. “We sent the recommendations at about 11 am on Wednesday and on Wednesday evening, when I was informed that the medical (test of the judges to be elevated) has been done, I myself was very shocked. I couldn’t believe it. I said what you are saying. I am as much in awe as you are,” the CJI said in an informal chat with journalists covering the apex court.

With the induction of the new judges, the strength of the Supreme Court has now risen to 28 against a sanctioned strength of 31.

After the swearing-in, CJI Gogoi and Justice SA Bobde visited the press lounge of the Supreme Court to have an informal interaction with the journalists covering court news for various print and electronic media. It was during the interaction that the Chief Justice expressed his admiration for the swift manner in which the appointments were done.

“I was surprised by the “unprecedented” speed with which the Government cleared the names of four judges within 48 hours of the collegium recommending their names,” the CJI said.

In the case of Justice KM Joseph, the Centre had dragged its decision for months, before returning his name through an unprecedented act of splitting the SC recommendation to notify only the appointment of Justice Indu Malhotra.

The CJI also said that 14 benches of two judges each will sit on Mondays and Fridays for faster disposal of cases to curb the pendency.

The CJI also acknowledged that the appointment of Justice Dave as acting CJ of Gujarat HC instead of Justice Qureshi happened by an oversight and that the mistake was corrected soon as it was realised.

During interaction, the CJI also revealed plans to give translated copies of SC judgments to litigants in their mother tongue if they are unable to understand English.

The Union Law Ministry had notified the appointments of Justices Hemant Gupta, Ajay Rastogi, MR Shah and R Subhash Reddy late on Thursday night. While Justice Gupta was the Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, Justice Reddy was the Gujarat High Court’s chief justice. Justice Shah was the chief justice of the Patna High Court and Justice Rastogi was the chief justice of the Tripura High Court.