Madras High Court Registrar General Alli retires pending recommendation to elevate her as judge

Madras High Court Registrar General (R-G) S. Alli has retired from service on attaining the age of superannuation of 60, fixed for judicial officers, pending a recommendation made by the Supreme Court collegium in May this year to elevate her as a judge of the High Court.

However, sources say, she would be eligible for elevation as and when the Centre accepts the recommendation and the President issues a warrant of appointment, since the retirement age for High Court judges is 62 and there have been precedents of such appointment of retired judicial officers.

The Madras High Court collegium had sent a series of proposals on November 4, November 21, December 7 and December 10, 2025 for elevating many lawyers as well as serving judicial officers as judges of the court. The Supreme Court collegium considered all those proposals on May 18, 2026.

Ms. Alli’s name figured in the first list sent by the High Court collegium on November 4, 2025. After considering the proposals in accordance with the Memorandum of Procedure for Appointment of High Court judges, the Supreme Court had recommended 19 names including 10 lawyers and nine judicial officers.

Pending consideration of the recommendation, the R-G retired from service on June 30, 2026 and hence the High Court administration had appointed Principal District Judge Deepthi Arivunithi, now serving as Officer on Special Duty to assist the R-G, as the new Registrar General of the High Court.

The Madras High Court has a sanctioned strength of 75 judges and though more than a month had passed since the Supreme Court collegium recommended the appointment of 19 judges to the High Court, none of the recommendations had led to issuance of appointment orders so far.

The judicial officers recommended by the collegium for elevation as High Court judges include P. Murugan M.D. Sumathi, Ms. Alli, C. Thirumagal Chandrasekar, Dharmalingam Lingeswaran, Karthikeyan Balathandayutham, S. Karthikeyan, B. Murugesan and N. Gunasekaran.

Further, the top court’s collegium had also recommended advocates N. Ramesh, G.K. Muthukumar, R. Rajesh Vivekananthan, S. Raveekumar, N. Dilip Kumar, E. Manoharan, K. Govindarajan, Rajnish Pathiyil, K. Appadurai and R. Anitha for being elevated to the Bench.