With the Supreme Court collegium system here to stay, a Constitution Bench will on Tuesday kick-start a brainstorming to “better” and make transparent the mechanism to appoint judges to the higher judiciary.
Though delivering the NDA government’s first legislative victory – the National Judicial Appointments Commission law – a crushing blow in a majority verdict on October 16, a five-judge Bench led by Justice J.S. Khehar held that all is not well with the two-decade old Collegium manner of appointing judges.
As a result of the misgivings commonly felt among all the judges — Justices Khehar, J. Chelameswar, Madan B. Lokur, Kurian Joseph and Adarsh Kumar Goel – about the opaqueness of the collegium system, the Bench had fixed November 3 to invite suggestions from the government, petitioners in NJAC challenge and senior advocate on how to improve the mechanism.
Detailed written submissions filed by the main petitioner, Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association (SCAORA), to improve the collegium system, which includes bringing judicial appointments under the RTI, is contrasted by total silence from the government side.
Centre to wait and watchIn fact, government sources maintain that they would wait and watch to see what suggestions come forth for a better collegium system.
It can be argued that since it was a nine-judge Bench of the Supreme Court with Justice J.S. Verma at the head which established the Collegium system in 1993, any tinkering with the Collegium should also be done by a Bench of a similar or higher denomination of judges and not a five-judge Bench.
Published - November 03, 2015 02:33 am IST
