Chief Justice of India J S Khehar said on Monday that a new procedure for appointing judges to the higher judiciary may be finalized by end-February. He made this observation while hearing a PIL on the openness in the appointment of judges. Earlier in the day, President Pranab Mukherjee had cleared the names of five new judges for the Supreme Court. These are Madras High Court Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Rajasthan High Court Chief Justice Naveen Sinha, Kerala High Court Chief Justice Mohan M Shantanagouder, Chhattisgarh High Court Chief Justice Dipak Gupta and Karnataka High Court judge Justice S Abdul Nazeer. According to sources in the Law Ministry, the warrants of appointments of the new judges is likely to be issued this week. Of the sanctioned strength of 31 judges, the Supreme Court is currently short of eight - an all-time low. While three more judges are to retire this year, seven more will superannuate in 2018. In the last such appointments, the top court got four judges in May 2016. Since December 2016, the collegium had not made any recommendation to the government for appointment of new judges in the apex court. Rejecting a PIL seeking transparency in the appointments of judges, Justice Khehar, along with Justice N V Ramana, said: "Let us tell you the MoP (Memorandum of Procedure) is work in progress…and we should be able to finalize it by the end of this month." The CJI added: "We think we will finalize the MoP may be within this month. I can say many of your grievances (relating to opaqueness in the procedure to appoint judges) will be taken care of by the new MoP."