The government has cleared the appointment of Justice Krishna Murari of the Allahabad HC as the Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana HC and the President is expected to issue the warrant of appointment soon. The government has also cleared the appointment of 14 judges to various HCs, in addition to confirming the appointment of ad hoc judges of HCs as permanent ones. This is the largest number of appointments made this year. Madras HC, which has 56 judges as against the sanctioned strength of 75, got seven more judges in P T Usha, Subramonium Prasad, N Anand Venketesh, M Nirmal Kumar, Krishnan Ramaswami, C Sarvanan and G K Elanthirayan. The Madhya Pradesh HC got five more judges - Sanjay Dwivedi, Akhil Kumar Srivastava, Braj Kishore Srivastava, Rajendra Kumar Srivastava and Mohd Sahim Anwar. Karnataka HC got two new judges - Mohd Nawaz and H T Narendra Prasad. The Supreme Court has seven vacancies including that of the CJI. The SC collegium is considering names of many chief justices and senior judges of HCs for appointment as SC judges.