Three advance increments for District Judges taken straight from the Bar with a postgraduate law degree, Kerala High Court holds

4 November 2026

The Bench of Justice Devan Ramachandran and Justice Basant Balaji ruled that a direct recruit to the District Judge cadre who holds an LLM must receive those three increments in advance, reckoned from 1 July 1996. The appeal was filed by retired Justice A.V. Ramakrishna Pillai, who began as a direct-recruit District Judge. The benefit flows from the First National Judicial Pay Commission, better known as the Shetty Commission, whose recommendations the Supreme Court approved with modifications. Kerala had accepted the recommendation but a 2013 government order gave the increments only to officers appointed after that order. The Bench quashed that order to the extent it worked only prospectively, and set aside later communications refusing to extend it backwards. It said the exclusion of earlier officers amounted to hostile discrimination and that the State had wrongly treated a legal entitlement as an act of leniency. The judgment is reported as 2026 LiveLaw (Ker) 612.