A record appointment of 165 judges to the High Courts in a single calendar year is one of the key highlights of a year-ender prepared by the Law Ministry. Yet, the friction between the Union government and the Supreme Court over delays in judicial appointments is what dominated the headlines in 2022.
While the top court said the Collegium system was the “law of the land”, Law Minister Kiren Rijiju informed Parliament that there was a need for a new system of appointments but stopped short of spelling out the government’s intent on bringing back the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) that was struck down by the SC as “unconstitutional”.
“Representations from diverse sources on lack of transparency, objectivity and social diversity in the Collegium system of appointment of judges to the constitutional courts are received from time to time with the request to improve this system of appointment of judges. The government has sent suggestions for supplementing the Memorandum of Procedure for appointment of judges to the High Courts and Supreme Court,” Mr. Rijiju told the Rajya Sabha on December 22. A week earlier, he said that questions of judicial vacancy would keep arising until a new system was in place.
In August 2014, barely three months after the Narendra Modi government took oath of office, the NJAC law, effected through the 99th Constitutional Amendment, was passed in Parliament by near unanimity. But eight years later, political fault lines have deepened. Congress Parliamentary Party chief Sonia Gandhi recently accused the Modi government of trying to “delegitimise” the judiciary.
“A troubling new development is the calculated attempt under way to delegitimise the judiciary. Ministers — and even a high constitutional authority — have been enlisted to making speeches attacking the judiciary on various grounds. It is quite clear that this is not an effort to provide reasonable suggestions for improvement. Rather, it is an effort to reduce the standing of the judiciary in the eyes of the public,” she alleged.
Opposition leaders argue that though there is a strong case for reforming the “opaque” Collegium system, they cannot “empower” the government in matters of judicial appointments. “Like in a game of cricket, you play by the rules and when there is a dispute, the third umpire steps in, the Judiciary is the Third Umpire. But the government wants to capture the third umpire itself,” Rajya Sabha member Kapil Sibal said. “The third umpire may have shortcomings but the government cannot be allowed to be the final arbiter of who is to be a judge or play the role of an umpire,” he added.
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