Appointments to the district judiciary are made by state governments (through the support of public service commissions) and High Courts to vacant positions in the sanctioned strength of judges. Without going into the age-old issue of the method to be used to calculate judge strength and the merits of each method proposed in the past, appointing authorities known one thing – a sanctioned strength of judges in each state which can be filled.
As per data from annual reports of the Supreme Court over the last decade, as collated by JALDI’s Judicial Vacancy portal, the percentage of vacancies in India’s district judiciary between 2015 and 2025 remained fairly constant between 20-29%. The slight increase in judicial vacancies in the recent past is due to a noticeable increase in sanctioned strength between 2023 and 2024, without a corresponding increase in the working strength.