Sitting judges of the Supreme Court will serve an average tenure of 5.1 years: June 2025

Currently, there are 33 sitting judges on the Supreme Court Bench and one vacant seat. On average, the sitting judges of the top Court will serve 5.1 years, a decrease from the 5.3-year average recorded in March last year. 

Judges of the Supreme Court are appointed by the Union government upon the recommendation of the Supreme Court Collegium. Article 124 of the Constitution stipulates that judges of the top court retire at the age of 65. Judges of High Courts retire at 62. 

Considering that the Collegium recommends candidates primarily from a pool of High Court Chief Justices who are about to retire in view of their inter se seniority, many of them end up securing a short tenure of a little over three years in the Supreme Court. This limited tenure, therefore, inevitably raises a crucial question on tenure at the top court: do our judges get enough time to make an impact during their service?

Longer tenures are generally indicative of institutional stability. They allow judges to develop deeper expertise and ensure consistency in legal interpretation. In this post, we examine the average tenures of the 33 sitting judges of the Court. 

More than half of the judges have a below-average tenure

Figure 1 below plots the number of years each sitting judge will serve at the top court. It is arranged in order of longest to shortest tenure. 

Chief Justice B.R. Gavai, the seniormost judge of the Court, will serve a tenure of 6.5 years, higher than the current average. However, eight judges, five of whom are in line to become Chief Justices of the Supreme Court, serve a longer tenure than Justice Gavai.  The CJI’s in line include Justices J.B. Pardiwala (8.2), K.V. Viswanathan (8), Surya Kant (7.8), P.S. Narasimha (6.7) and Joymalya Bagchi (6.6). 

Only 15 out of the 33 judges (45 percent) will serve a tenure above the average. Of the other 18 (55 percent), 11 judges will serve a tenure of less than four years at the top court. 

Justice Manmohan, who was recommended by the Collegium led by former Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna, will serve the shortest tenure of three years. Justice Pardiwala, who has the highest tenure, was recommended by the N.V. Ramana-led Collegium in 2021. 

Tenure and diversity

The only sitting woman judge, Justice B.V. Nagarathna, will serve an above-average tenure of 6.2 years. She is also in line to become India’s 54th Chief Justice in 2027, albeit for 36 days. Justice Nagarathna beats two averages: of sitting Supreme Court judges and of all the 11 women judges to have ever served as a judge of the top court. Justice Nagarathna and Justice Ruma Pal (who served between 2000 and 2006) were the only women to have had a tenure of over six years. 

In our average tenure story published last year, we noted that Justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah, the only sitting Muslim judge, will serve a tenure of 5.2 years. Justice A.G. Masih, the lone Christian judge, will serve a tenure of 4.3 years. A year later, the data remains the same, as no new Muslim or Christian judges have been appointed to the Court since. 

Currently, the Supreme Court Bench has two judges directly elevated from the Bar: Justices Viswanathan and P.S. Narasimha. Both serve longer tenures of 8 and 6.7 years, respectively. There have been no new appointments from the Bar since 2023.

Appointments under different CJIs

The 33 sitting judges at the Court were recommended by Collegia led by six different Chief Justices since 2019. Figure 2 below showcases the CJI responsible for the appointment of each judge.

Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud-led collegium appointed 17 judges (shown in light green), forming a majority of the judges in our Court today. The average tenure of these 17 judges is 5 years.

The Ramana-led Collegium recommended seven judges (shown in dark orange) whose average tenure is 6.4 years. 

Chief Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Gavai have recommended three judges each. The former bunch (represented in light orange) have an average of 4.9 years, and the latter (shown in yellow) of 4.5 years.

CJI Ranjan Gogoi recommended two judges (shown in dark green) with an average tenure of 7 years and CJI U.U. Lalit appointed one judge (shown in red) with a tenure of 7.2 years. 

Securing longer tenures

The two simple ways of securing longer tenures for judges at the top Court are to increase the age of retirement or to appoint judges earlier in their career (in 2021, we saw that judges are around 60 years old when appointed). The ground reality, however, is a little more complicated.

The question of the age of retirement of Supreme Court judges is a long-contested issue. In the Constituent Assembly Debates, members had arrived at 65 after much deliberation. A primary concern of increasing it was that judges may lose their mental fitness and ability to serve the post well after 60 years. Judges themselves have often made the argument that retirement age should be extended.  But there is also the fact that the retirement age ensures a healthy rotation of new judges, giving opportunity as well as maintaining contemporaneity.

In December 2022, the Department of Justice, in a presentation to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Law, and Justice, advised against raising the retirement age for judges. It cautioned that such a move could result in “non-deserving” persons receiving extended service benefits.

In recommending judges to the Supreme Court, the Collegium does not (officially) consider age. Its focus lies on factors such as seniority of judges in High Courts, merit, integrity and disposition rate. Previously, the Collegium has considered diversity of region, gender and community. 

Then there is also the constitutional mandate to consider. Article 124(3) stipulates that one must have served as a High Court judge for at least five years or practised as an advocate for 10 years or be an eminent jurist in the opinion of the President to be made a Supreme Court judge. 

Between the considerations for appointment and retirement, average tenures remain between 5.4 and 5.1 over the last few years.