Appointment of Judges Tussle: No Easy Solution
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2023-01-16 07:04:05
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
Taking the
fight against the process of appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and
High Courts to the next level, Law minister Kiren Rijiju has written to the
Chief Justice of India, Justice D Y Chandrachud, to include the representatives
of the Central government in the Supreme Court collegium and the
representatives of the concerned state governments in the respective High Court
collegiums. It is highly unlikely that the Supreme Court will agree to this
request and the dispute is likely to escalate in the coming weeks.
The process
of appointing judges to the higher judiciary is under fire from the government
side for long. After the Supreme Court held that the National Judicial
Appointments Act (NJAC) was unconstitutional and the collegium system would
continue and later ordered the Centre to follow strict timelines in clearing
names forwarded by the collegium, the Centre has raised the issue of lack of
transparency and public accountability in the collegium system to hit back at the process. It has also
refused to follow the timeline and has sat upon or sent back several names in the recent
past.
With the
judiciary not willing to cede ground and taking exception to the interference
of the government in matters of appointing judges and with the government
equally determined to have a say in the selection of judges, this issue is
likely to lead to an acrimonious tussle between the two and there seems to be
no easy solution to the problem. A major part of the blame lies with the judiciary
as it has refused (except for some months) to make the deliberations of the collegium
public. This lack of transparency is not good for the judiciary.
But having
government representatives on the collegiums is not the ideal solution. The
government must build up political consensus by taking all political parties
along, discuss the matter with the judiciary and introduce another bill on the
lines of the NJAC to find a lasting solution.
