Bill to increase SC judges passed

The Lok Sabha has recently passed a bill, Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Bill, in favor of increasing the number of judges in the Supreme Court. The apex court currently has 30 judges and the bill had proposed to increase it to 33. Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told the House, “The Honourable Chief Justice of India in a letter to the government had expressed the need for more judges citing pendency and the fact that nowadays there are many matters that require to be heard by five-member Constitutional Benches. The number of judges has been increased several times in the past”. Shankar also spoke about the 58,000 pending cases in the Supreme Court which needs to be resolved soon and for which this amendment is duly required. This kind of a change in the number of judges of the Supreme Court has taken place after a decade, the last one taking place in 2009.