first serving judge to be appointed as Union Law Secretary

Anoop Kumar Mendiratta, the first serving judge to be appointed Union Law Secretary, was chosen from a pool of 60 candidates in October 2019. He was appointed as a High Court judge on Friday, making him the first Union Law Secretary to do so. 

With a term of almost three years, the former district and sessions judge in the Karkardooma courts in the capital will now take his place in the Delhi High Court.

"Shri Anoop Kumar Mendiratta, our Law Secretary, has been appointed as a Judge of the Delhi High Court. He was a judge with a high level of honesty and legal understanding. I appreciate his tremendous assistance. "I wish him the best of luck in his new duty as a Judge to deliver Justice," Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said on Twitter. 

The Delhi High Court submitted eight recommendations for justices in July of last year. The Supreme Court collegium recommended six people from that list for nomination on February 3 of this year.

"In exercise of the power conferred in Clause (1) of Article 217 of the Constitution of India, the President is pleased to appoint (1) Smt Neena Bansal Krishna, (2) Dinesh Kumar Sharma, (3) Anoop Kumar Mendiratta, (4) Sudhir Kumar Jain, to be judges of the Delhi High Court, in that order of seniority, with effect from the date they assume charge of their respective offices," the Ministry of Law and Justice said in a statement on Friday. 

The operational strength of the Delhi High Court would rise to 34 judges, just over half of its sanctioned strength of 62 judges, as a result of these appointments.

Mendiratta was the former Delhi Principal Secretary (Law) who clashed with the AAP administration over a decision to pursue a group of JNU students in an alleged sedition case, including former students' union leaders Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid. 

With the case deadlocked in court without a ruling, Delhi's Home Department sent the file to the Law Department for review in January 2019. As Principal Secretary, Mendiratta returned the file, stating that the Lieutenant Governor was the appropriate authority in the case.

The Delhi government was enraged, and Law Minister Kailash Gahlot issued Mendiratta a show cause notice, demanding to know why the file was returned without his knowledge.

In response to the charge of insubordination, Mendiratta claimed that only the Lieutenant Governor had the ability to conduct an independent review of the purported sedition case and issue prosecution sanction. He was returned to his parent cadre, the Delhi Judicial Service. Following that, his appointment as Union Law Secretary broke the tradition of elevating an extra secretary from the Indian Legal Services (ILS) pool to the position. Mendiratta was essential in arranging a gathering of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Ministers of Justice as Union Law Secretary (SCO).While this is the first time a Union Law Secretary has been appointed to the Supreme Court, district judges on deputation with governments or the judiciary are frequently elevated. 

Ravindra Maithani, the then-Supreme Court Secretary General, was appointed as a judge of the Uttarakhand High Court in 2018. A Santosh Reddy, a former Telangana district and sessions judge who was also the state's Law Secretary, was appointed to the Telangana High Court in 2019.

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