“Tell us, how many names (recommended by the collegium) are pending with you,” the court asked the centre’s top law officer KK Venugopal.

When Mr Venugopal said “I will have to find out”, the court shot back: “When it comes to the government, you say “we will find out’.”

The Attorney General argued that collegium, or a group of top Supreme Court judges mandated to recommend names to the President, wasn’t sending enough names.

“Some high courts have 40 vacancies and recommendation of the collegium is only for three. And the government is being told that we are tardy in filing up the vacancy,” he said.

“The collegium will have to see the broad picture and recommend more names,” Mr Venugopal said, asserting that the government could not do anything “if there is no collegium recommendation”.

During the back and forth between the centre’s top law officer and the bench, Mr Venugopal refused to give a date by when the two chief justices recommended by the Supreme Court collegium would be appointed. He said the orders would be issued “shortly”.

“What shortly? Shortly could be three months,” the bench retorted.

Mr Venugopal stood his ground.

He also pointed to a recommendation of the collegium to appoint a judge in the Manipur High Court and specifying that he would continue to function in Gauhati High Court.

The collegium on April 19 recommended that Justices M Yaqoob Mir and Ramalingam Sudhakar be appointed as the chief justices of the Meghalaya and Manipur high courts. But the names are yet to be cleared. The appointments are formally done by the executive based on the collegium recommendations.

Venugopal said a decision on these appointments would be made soon. “What are the people from the Northeast supposed to do? They come before us and say: ‘please transfer our case to other high courts’. They spend money for this,” Justice Lokur said, giving the government 10 days to get back to court on the matter.

The collegium, headed by Chief Justice of India, is a 3-member body to select high court judges and chief justices. For selecting Supreme Court judges, the collegium has five members.