Sometimes revolutions arrive loudly. Others appear as a routine PDF on a Supreme Court website. What the Court uploaded this week looked like a dry docket of High Court appointments under Chief Justice B.R. Gavai. It is not. It is the most radical act of transparency the Collegium has ever undertaken—one that may permanently rewrite how India sees judicial appointments.
Between 14 May 2025 and now, the Gavai-led Collegium processed 129 names and approved 93. For barely six months, that volume is unprecedented. It signals a system jolted out of inertia, finally addressing years of judicial vacancies that have crippled the High Courts. But the statistics are only the surface. Hidden beneath is a quiet structural transformation.
The composition of the approved list is itself a break from past opacity. Of the 93 names, 11 are OBC/BC, 10 are SC, 13 come from minority communities, and 15 are women. These are not leaks. These are not RTI-evaded scraps. These are official, published category disclosures—something the Collegium flatly refused to reveal for decades. Where there used to be silence, there is now a demographic map of the Indian judiciary.
Then comes the next shift: the Bar is back. Advocates from Bombay, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and especially Allahabad dominate the approvals. Private practice, long treated as secondary to judicial service, is now front and centre. Bombay’s overrepresentation is unmistakable, but the real story lies elsewhere.
Look at Allahabad. For years, the nation’s largest High Court has suffered chronic, debilitating vacancies. The Court’s sanctioned strength—one of the biggest in the world—has repeatedly run at half capacity. Under Gavai, that neglect ends. The new lists show page after page of appointments targeted at reviving the Allahabad bench. This is not routine; it is repair.
And then the transparency deepens in a way no one expected.
For the first time, the Collegium has voluntarily revealed which candidates are related to sitting or retired judges. Fathers. Mothers. In-laws. The list counts five such cases. This disclosure is unprecedented. For decades, judicial kinship was whispered about, denied, or buried under propriety. Suddenly, it is printed in black and white. The message is unmistakable: if relatives are being elevated, the judiciary will no longer hide it.
Just as striking is a new set of columns that quietly rewires the accountability debate. For each recommended name, the document lists (1) the date of recommendation, (2) the date the Government notified the appointment, and (3) the actual date of elevation. For the first time, delays are measurable. No more anecdotes. No more political finger-pointing. The public can now see exactly how long the executive held names back.
And then comes the sharpest disclosure of all—a list of judges recommended under previous Chief Justices but cleared only now. Some were pending since April 2023. Others since May 2023. These files sat for over two years. The invisible pipeline that everyone speculated about is now visible, documented, and undeniable. The Government cannot claim ignorance of pending names. The judiciary cannot pretend the backlog didn’t exist. Accountability has finally found timestamps.
This is not housekeeping. This is narrative reclamation through transparency. A pre-emptive counter to every accusation that the Collegium protects its own, hides caste numbers, or shields nepotism. The Gavai Collegium has done four things simultaneously: increased volume, broadened representation, elevated Bar talent, and exposed bottlenecks—both internal and executive.
If this becomes the new normal, no future Collegium can retreat into secrecy. Once you publish caste splits, gender counts, kinship disclosures, executive delays, and historical pendency in a single public document, silence stops being an option.
The Supreme Court rarely communicates through data.
Today, it spoke louder than ever.
