Posting of Judicial Officers

When I became Acting Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court I announced that I would post judicial officers wherever their spouses were living and working,unless for some reason it was absolutely impossible. Before this announcement, husbands and wives were often living apart in far distant places.

Although there was no such requirement in the service rules, I believed that if husband and wife live together they will have a better family life, their children will be properly looked after, and this will give them a freer mind to work better.

I applied my new policy not only where both husband and wife were judicial officers, but also where one of them was not.

As a result, many judicial officers,men and women, applied to be posted where their spouses were living and working. I remember one young lady judicial officer, recently married, who applied was posted  in district Sonbhadra ( in south eastern U.P. ) while her husband was working in a western U.P. district. I immediately posted her in the city where her husband was located. Another male Additional District Judge who applied was posted in Azamgarh in eastern U.P. while his wife was a teacher in a College in western U.P. I transferred him to the city where his wife was working. A large number of other judicial officers in U.P. were similarly transferred and posted at the place of their spouses.

When such judicial officers who applied in pursuance to my announcement came to Allahabad and met me, I would only tell them one thing, and that they should promise to me orally that they would work 25% harder after their new posting at the place of their spouses. I told them that I would not verify whether they had kept their promise, and in fact could hardly do so, as I was likely to go to some other High Court shortly as Chief Justice of another High Court (  under the policy of the government one could not be the Chief Justice of his parent High Court ), but I would trust that they would keep their word to me. From some reports I later got I learnt that most of them kept their promise.

 Later, when I went as Chief Justice of Madras High Court I did the same there too.