3 New SC Judges Sworn In, Strength Now 37 | CLAT Legal GK

CURRENT AFFAIRS | 07 OCTOBER 2026

On Tuesday, 6 October 2026, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant administered the oath of office to three new judges of the Supreme Court — Justice Sunita Agarwal, Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh. According to reports in The Hindu and LiveLaw, the elevation takes the working strength of the Supreme Court to 37, against a sanctioned strength of 38 (including the Chief Justice of India), leaving one vacancy. The ceremony was held at the Supreme Court and was live-streamed; unusually, it took place in the afternoon rather than in the morning.

All three judges came to the Supreme Court from the post of Chief Justice of a High Court. As reported by LiveLaw, Justice Sunita Agarwal was Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court, Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya was Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, and Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh was Chief Justice of the Telangana High Court. The Supreme Court Collegium had recommended them on 28 September 2026, and the Centre notified the appointments on 5 October 2026. With Justice Agarwal’s appointment, the number of women judges in the Supreme Court rises to three.

Why the number is 38: the 2026 amendment

The “sanctioned strength” of the Supreme Court is not written into the Constitution as a fixed figure. It is set by an ordinary law of Parliament — the Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Act, 1956. Until 2026 the strength stood at 34 (33 judges plus the Chief Justice), the figure fixed by the 2019 amendment. In May 2026 the Union Cabinet approved raising the number of judges, excluding the Chief Justice, by four — from 33 to 37 — and the increase was first given effect through an Ordinance. Parliament then passed the Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Bill, 2026: the Lok Sabha cleared it first, and the Rajya Sabha passed it on 5 August 2026, completing parliamentary approval. The Bill was moved by Union Law and Justice Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal, and the stated aim was to help the Court deal with its rising pendency. The sanctioned strength is now therefore 38 including the CJI, and the three appointments of 6 October bring the Court to 37.

The history of this number is a favourite GK sequence. The original Constitution provided for a Chief Justice and not more than seven other judges — a court of eight. The 1956 Act raised the number of other judges to 10, and later amendments took it to 13 (1960), 17 (1977), 25 (1986), 30 (2008) and 33 (2019). The 2026 amendment, which takes it to 37, is the first increase since 2019.

The collegium: how the names were chosen

The word “consultation” in Article 124(2) has been the subject of a long judicial debate, known as the Judges Cases. In the First Judges Case (S.P. Gupta v Union of India, 1981), the Court held that consultation did not mean concurrence, giving the executive primacy. The Second Judges Case (Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association v Union of India, 1993) reversed this and gave primacy to the judiciary, creating the collegium system. The Third Judges Case (1998), decided on a Presidential reference under Article 143, expanded the collegium for Supreme Court appointments to the CJI and the four senior-most judges. In the Fourth Judges Case (2015), the Court struck down the Ninety-ninth Constitutional Amendment and the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act, restoring the collegium.

The 6 October appointments follow that route: the collegium recommended the three names, and the Centre notified them through the President’s warrant. The pattern of elevating serving High Court Chief Justices is common, because the collegium weighs seniority, the representation of different High Courts and merit. The parent High Courts of the three judges, as reported by LiveLaw, are Allahabad (Justice Agarwal and Justice Upadhyaya) and Jharkhand (Justice Singh).

Analysis: strength, vacancies and pendency

Raising the sanctioned strength does not by itself reduce pendency; the seats have to be filled. That is why the “working strength” matters as much as the sanctioned figure. With 37 judges in place against 38 posts, the Court is now one short of its full complement. A larger bench pool allows more benches to sit at once, including more Constitution Benches of at least five judges, which Article 145(3) requires for deciding substantial questions of law as to the interpretation of the Constitution and for Presidential references under Article 143.

The appointments also add to the slowly rising number of women on the Court. The first woman judge of the Supreme Court was Justice M. Fathima Beevi, appointed in 1989. Representation, regional balance and seniority remain recurring themes in debates on the collegium, and any of them could form the basis of a reasoning passage.

Bottom line

The 6 October oath is a routine constitutional event with non-routine exam value. It brings together a fresh fact (three judges, working strength 37), a recent statutory change (the 2026 amendment taking the sanctioned strength to 38) and the static framework of Article 124 and the collegium. Learn the numbers precisely and the constitutional sources behind them.