SC nod for draft paper on judges appointment

The government could suggest names for appointment as judges to superior courts under the existing collegium system, the Supreme Court said on Wednesday, a conciliatory gesture after its earlier order to strike down the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act had caused strain in the relations between the judiciary and executive. “Rules/guidelines must be prescribed for selection of candidates to ensure transparency”.

“There must be well-defined criteria that should be established by the Supreme Court for appointments to the High Courts and to the Supreme Court”.

Both Dattar and Anand were asked by the court to collate the suggestions.

Today was the first hearing in the matter after the Court had chose to invite suggestions from the public on how the Collegium system of appointments could be improved.

“There should be an Annual Report on appointments which should be publicly available”.

“A panel of eligible candidates must be prepared in advance and appointment may be made through this panel”. Before names are finalised, there should be an informal consultative meeting with the Chief Minister to avoid delay in the clearance of files.

At present, the procedure to be followed by the collegium in the appointment of judges to higher judiciary is part of memorandum of procedure issued by the government on June 30, 1999 in the wake of the 1998 nine judges’ verdict while answering a presidential reference on the appointment of jud ges by the collegium.

Both Nariman and Rohatgi also argued that the difference in the retirement age of High Court judges and Supreme Court judges should be done away with.

“Lawyers practising in district courts rarely appear in High Courts and hence are not considered for appointment as High Court judges. There is an urgent need to fill up the vacancies”, Rohatgi said, referring to the backlog of cases in various courts.

Responding to Rohatgi’s submission, the bench said it has not put any bar on the collegium.

A constitution bench comprising Justices Jagdish Singh Khehar, J Chelameswar, Madan B Lokur, Kurian Joseph and Adarsh Kumar Goel was told this by Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi.

The bench said: “That is for the Bar Council of India to frame the rules”. Another said applications from candidates must indicate relatives who are judges. The nominations can also be made by senior advocates. “The zone of consideration should not be merely from relatives of advocates or judges”, the compilation of suggestions said. The only limitation was that the suggestion must pertain to any of the four categories, namely, the Collegium Secretariat, Transparency, Eligibility Criteria, and Complaints. They suspected that it may be a veiled attempt of the Executive to gain supremacy over the Collegium, having lost the battle over the NJAC.Rajeev Dhavan proposed that the AG be asked to prepare the revised MoP as the officer of the Court, and not as the senior law officer of the Government.