The Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Act, 1956 is a central Act of Parliament that regulates the maximum sanctioned strength of judges in the Supreme Court of India, excluding the Chief Justice of India (CJI). This legislative measure was enacted on September 16, 1956, to address the increasing workload and accumulation of cases in the apex court. The Constitution of India, under Article 124(1), originally fixed the strength at one CJI and seven other judges, but explicitly granted Parliament the power to prescribe a larger number by law.
The Act, which is primarily a two-section-long law, works by amending Section 2 to specify the maximum number of judges, excluding the CJI. When the Act was originally passed in 1956, it raised the maximum number of judges (excluding the CJI) from seven to ten. The number has been periodically increased through subsequent amendments to the Act to better equip the court to handle its caseload.
The Act connects directly to Article 124 of the Constitution, which establishes the Supreme Court and governs the appointment of judges. The strength has been revised multiple times, including increases to 13 in 1960, 25 in 1986, and 30 in 2009. The strength was last increased in 2019 by the Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Act, 2019, which substituted the word "thirty" with "thirty-three" in Section 2 of the 1956 Act. Most recently, an Ordinance was promulgated on May 17, 2026, amending Section 2 to replace "thirty-three" with "thirty-seven," raising the total sanctioned strength to 38 judges, including the CJI. This recent change was driven by the need to tackle the large pendency of cases, which was over 92,000 at the time.