Gogoi had last month written to Prime Minister Modi seeking to increase the strength of judges and raise the retirement age of high court judges to 65 years.
Agreeing to a demand made by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, the Union Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday approved increasing the strength of Supreme Court judges from 30 to 33.
The Supreme Court currently has 31 judges including the CJI and if the Parliament gives approval to the bill, the apex court will have a sanctioned strength of 34, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said while announcing the Cabinet decision.
After four new judges took oath in May, the Supreme Court reached its sanctioned strength of 31 judges including the CJI, first time since 2009 when Parliament had last increased the number of judges from 26 to 31.
Gogoi had last month written to Prime Minister Modi seeking to increase the strength of judges and raise the retirement age of high court judges to 65 years.
In three letters to the PM, Gogoi highlighted that there was pendency of 58,669 cases in the top court and the number was increasing due to filing of more fresh cases.
"Due to paucity of judges, the required number of Constitution benches to decide important cases involving questions of law were not being formed," the CJI said.
"You would recall that way back in 1988, about three decades ago, the judge strength of the SC was increased from 18 to 26, and then again after two decades in 2009, it was increased to 31, including the CJI, to expedite disposal of cases to keep pace with the rate of institution," Gogoi wrote.
"I request you to kindly consider, on top priority, to augment the judge-strength in the SC appropriately so that it can function more efficiently and effectively as it will go a long way to attain ultimate goal of rendering timely justice to the litigant public," his letter said.
In his second letter, the CJI urged Modi to consider bringing a constitutional amendment to increase the retirement age of high court judges from 62 to 65 years.
The government is yet to take a decision on raising the retirement age of high court judges.
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