NEW DELHI: The law ministry has notified the appointment of 14 new judges to four high courts, which include Delhi, Karnataka, Jharkhand, and J&K and Ladakh. The oath of office to the judges will be administered Monday.The appointees were judicial officers who were earlier recommended by Supreme Court collegium to be elevated to the different HCs. There are still several recommendations of the collegium pending due to procedural issues.Govt Saturday notified the appointment of seven judicial officers to be judges of Delhi HC. Those elevated include Nivedita Anil Sharma and Nisha Sahay Saxena, both made permanent judges of HC, and Sanjay Sharma, Bharat Parashar, Dinesh Bhatt, Arun Bhardwaj and Aditi Choudhary as additional judges, appointed for two years.

Judicial officer Yash Paul Bourney has been appointed as judge of J&K and Ladakh HC, while Manoj Prasad, Akhil Kumar and Ram Sharma as judges of Jharkhand HC. Usharani, Kuruba Shanthappa Bharath Kumar and Nerale Veerabhadraiah Bhavani have been appointed as additional judges of the Karnataka high court.The 25 high courts across the country together have 304 posts of judges vacant against a sanctioned strength of 1,122 judges, as of Sept 1. Allahabad HC has the highest number of posts vacant at 53, followed by HCs of Calcutta (23), and Punjab and Haryana (21).