If political and judicial executives don't reconcile their differences, the Supreme Court's working strength may fall to a low of 18 judges by the end of the year against the sanctioned strength of 31. Those due to retire this year include Chief Justice Dipak Misra (October 2) and Justices J. Chelameswar (June 22), Madan B. Lokur (December 30), Kurian Joseph (November 29), R.K. Agrawal (May 4) and A.K. Goel (July 7). Four of them - Justices Misra, Chelameswar, Lokur and Kurian Joseph - are members of the collegium, a panel of the five senior-most judges that recommends the appointments, promotions, and transfers of the apex court and high court judges. (The lone remaining member, Justice Ranjan Gogoi, will become Chief Justice on October 3.) Not surprisingly, the SC has a backlog of 60,000-plus cases while hundreds more are filed every day. On Mondays and Fridays, marked as "miscellaneous" days, each Supreme Court bench is bogged down with 70-odd new cases. On the remaining weekdays, the benches hear about 30-40 cases each. Judiciary-executive relations have nosedived since October 2015, when a five-judge bench struck down a law that had given the government a say in judges' appointments. This, and a subsequent stand-off over proposed amendments to the process of judicial appointments, has prompted the Centre to sit on the bulk of the collegium's recommendations.