Father, son and the holy Court

BY K CHANDRU PUBLISHED IN THE HINDU

Senior advocate Fali S. Nariman appearing in cases before the Supreme Court where his son is a judge has revived an old debate regarding the appropriateness of such appearances

In 1967, when U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the son of U.S. Supreme Court Judge Tom C. Clark as the Attorney General, Clark promptly resigned from his post. This was because an Attorney General will have to make frequent appearance in the court in which his father will be one of the judges adorning the bench and in that Supreme Court all the nine judges sit together. But in India that has not been the case. Right now the matter regarding the appropriateness of a lawyer appearing in a court in which his near relative is a judge has gained significance in the context of Fali S. Nariman, a leading senior advocate of the Supreme Court, continuing to appear in cases before the Supreme Court in which his son Rohinton F. Nariman has become a Judge since July 2014. While some criticism was aired regarding this in public, Mr. Nariman dismissed complaints maintaining that there is no legal bar for such appearance and said that everyone is equal before the law.

What rules say

Until 1961, in India, there were instances in which lawyers appeared in the same court over which their relatives were presiding. But after the Advocates Act, 1961 empowered the Bar Council of India to frame rules on the matter, such incidences have become rare. Under Rule 6 of the norms established by the Bar Council, no lawyer can practise in a court where any of his relatives functions as a judge. The list of such relatives included his/her father, grandfather, son, grandson, uncle, brother, nephew, stepbrother, husband, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, niece, father-in-law, brother-in-law or sister-in-law. However, there have been controversies as to whether the term ‘court’ mentioned in this Rule refers only to the court of that particular judge or the entire court where the relative works.

During the early 1980s, this rule came up for interpretation before the Karnataka High Court. Pramila Nesargi, a woman advocate who got married to Nesargi, a Karnataka High Court Judge who had lost his wife at that time, appeared before the court of Justice P.P. Bopanna. She was not a senior advocate at that time and as her name did not find mention in the vakalat filed in that case, the Judge directed her to file a vakalat to represent her client. The next day when her name appeared in the cause list, the judge who heard her case refused to allow her to appear before any judge in the Karnataka High Court.

He ruled: “The Bar Council prohibits a lawyer from appearing in a Court where a close relative works as a judge. While the term ‘court’ does not specifically refer to all the courts in a particular High Court, we should be strict in respect of a wife. A wife has an intimate relationship with her husband. Many matters discussed among judges would reach her ears. When a woman who has access to confidential matters in respect of a Court is allowed to practise in the same Court as a lawyer, it can spell danger.”

” Advocates Act, 1961 empowered the Bar Council of India to frame rules so that no lawyer can practise in a court where any of his relatives functions as a judge. ”

Subsequently, the matter was raised before the Supreme Court which ordered notice to the Bar Council. But the case was not taken to its logical end and the matter became infructuous as the counsel involved became a senior advocate and the Judge concerned was superannuated. Yet the controversy over the interpretation of the rule still continues to haunt the courts. When Justice P. Balakrishna Iyer became a judge of the Madras High Court, his son advocate P. B. Krishnamoorthy shifted his practice to another State. There was also a strange practice adopted by a lawyer in the early 1970s. The said lawyer used to sign hundreds of memos of appearances in bail applications so that those matters will not go before his father-in-law judge, who was known to be strict regarding granting of bail.

When Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer became a Supreme Court judge, his son who was a lawyer as well, chose not to practise in any court in India opting for private employment. Justice V. Sivaraman Nair of the Kerala High Court had worked as a junior of Justice Krishna Iyer. But as soon as his daughter and daughter-in-law started practising in the Kerala High Court, he requested the President of India to transfer him to another State.

Justice Leila Seth, a former Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh writing in her autobiography recalled her experience in the Patna High Court regarding the two kinds of ‘practice’ the Bar had adopted.

She wrote: “I heard people talking about ‘Uncle Practice’ and ‘Lal Jhanda’. I wondered what all this was about. I learnt that, since a son was not permitted practice in his father’s court, if you did not want the matter to be heard by that court, you briefed the son and thus stopped the matter from going before the father; you had put out a warning ’Red Flag’. This misuse of a rule that had been incorporated to prevent partisan decisions was apparently quite prevalent, and some young lawyers even managed to make a living out of it. It was also rumoured that certain judges favoured the sons of their brother judges, and so the ‘Uncle Practice’ thrived.”

In S. P. Gupta’s case (1981) dealing with the judges’ transfer issue relating to close relations taking undue advantage of a sitting judge, the following way out was suggested to avoid embarrassment: “We have to take into account the advice given by the CJI in one of the seminars that where close relations of a Judge or the Chief Justice practise in the same court and are likely to gain undue advantage, the concerned judge should himself, in obedience to the keen sense of justice which every Judge possesses opt to be transferred to some other High Court.”

In 1997, all the judges of the Supreme Court assembled under the Chairmanship of Chief Justice J. S. Verma and adopted a resolution on ‘The Values in Judicial Life’. That resolution stated that a judge should prohibit a close relative of his from appearing in his court. It also stated that no relative of his should practise law while staying in the Judge’s house. Markandeya Katju, in his judgment in Raja Khan’s case, sounded a warning on the ills of kith and kin being allowed to practise in the same court as their relatives. He said: “Some Judges have their kith and kin practising in the same court, and within a few years of starting practice the sons or relations of the Judge become multimillionaires, have huge bank balances, luxurious cars, huge houses and are enjoying a luxurious life. This is a far cry from the days when the sons and other relatives of Judges could derive no benefit from their relationship and had to struggle at the bar like any other lawyer.”

What is the way out?

When Justice R. M. Lodha took over as the Chief Justice of India, some presspersons raised a question as to whether it was not possible to prohibit relatives of a judge from practising as lawyers in the same Court. He replied that it was up to the Bar to find a solution to the problem. He also dismissed a public interest litigation filed by advocate M. L. Sharma seeking a ban on the relatives of judges practising in the same courts.

With the controversy reviving in the context of Mr. Nariman appearing in the court where his son is a judge, the Bar Council of India must be called upon to suitably amend relevant rules and uphold the faith of the common man in the judiciary.

(K. Chandru is a retired Judge of the Madras High Court.)

Correction

>>There was a reference to Justice A.S. Bopanna in the Comment page article – “Father, son and the holy Court” (Oct. 24, 2014). It should have been Justice P.P. Bopanna.

The current accountability deficit

BY RAJU RAMACHANDRAN IN THE INDIAN EXPRESS

Debates on the collegium system generally start at the wrong place, namely, whether a national judicial commission will be a better alternative. The point at which they ought to start is whether the creation of such a system is constitutionally permissible. Article 124 of the Constitution states that every judge of the Supreme Court shall be appointed by the president in consultation with such of the judges of the Supreme Court, and of the high courts in the states, as the president may deem necessary. It also says that in the case of appointment of a judge other than the chief justice, the chief justice of India (CJI) shall always be consulted.

In the name of the independence of the judiciary, the Supreme Court said in 1993 that primacy in the matter of judicial appointments must lie in the final opinion of the CJI, “unless for very good reasons known to the executive and disclosed to the chief justice of India, that appointment is not considered to be suitable”. To mitigate the violence done to the

plain language of the Constitution and to reassure every one that power did not rest in one individual alone, that is, the CJI, the court created a new constitutional institution, a collegium of the senior-most judges.

This was not a creative interpretation of the Constitution, as the apologists for the collegium system would have us believe, but a plain rewrite. This was judicial overreach and it was only last year, 20 years later, that serious attempts began to repair the damage to the Constitution.

Having stated my fundamental objection, I will recapitulate my three other objections. First, there must be an element of democratic accountability in the matter of appointments to the higher judiciary, which has the power to strike down laws of Parliament and state legislatures, and even amendments to the Constitution. Second, when judges appoint judges, they look mainly at “technical competence” and seniority. They do not necessarily look at the social philosophies or gender sensitivities of prospective candidates. Third, judges do not pay particular attention to the idea of manpower planning, as is clear from the many short-term appointments of chief justices and short-term appointments to the Supreme Court. In a judge-dominated system, everyone needs to be given a “chance”.

And so, it is about time that we put a better system in place. There is no going back now to the original system of the executive appointing judges in consultation with the judiciary, by invoking the doctrine of “original intent”. Much has changed in the world since we enacted the Constitution. Processes of judicial appointments are far more participatory all over the world. Stakeholders in the justice delivery system are now accorded an important role. Let us look at just two examples.

In Canada, the advisory committee for judicial appointments includes a member of parliament from each recognised party, a retired judge, a nominee of the attorney general, a nominee of the law societies and two prominent Canadians who are neither lawyers nor judges. In South Africa, the Judicial Service Commission includes judges, the minister for justice or his nominee, advocates and solicitors nominated by their respective professional bodies, a professor of law, senators and four nominees of the president of whom two shall be advocates or solicitors.

The judicial appointments commission (JAC) needs to be written into the Constitution itself, not only in terms of its creation but also its composition. It is necessary to make this point because the previous government had originally sought to bring the commission into the Constitution, but left it to Parliament to make an ordinary law to prescribe its membership. This was undesirable. Successive governments would have been free to change its composition according to their will.

Should the JAC be a part-time body? The Union Public Service Commission is not part-time. Surely, appointments to the superior judiciary are not less serious a matter than civil service appointments. But the present collegium, by its very nature, can only meet in the evenings after the judges have finished their arduous courtroom work, and before they start writing their judgments and reading for their cases the next day. To make appointments to the Supreme Court and all the high courts in the country, we need a full-time institution with a permanent secretariat and its own information- gathering wing. And so, the judicial members would have to be former and not sitting judges. Similarly, jurists and eminent citizens will need to be full-time members. The only possible part-time ex officio member could be the law minister.

The national judicial commission will need to devise new methods for attracting talent to the judiciary. The old practice of “asking” and “inviting” must be supplemented by calling for applications from interested candidates (currently, you can apply to become a district judge, but it is bad form to apply to be a high court judge!). Search committees will have to look for the best legal talent, not only from within the court system but also outside. In the current system, non-litigating lawyers don’t ever get considered.

And the question of the “tilting balance” remains. Former judges (most recently, Justice A.P. Shah) take the view that the independence of the judiciary can only be secu red by judges outnumbering the others. I, however, believe that democratic accountability in the process of appointment is equally important and, in principle, judges should be marginally outnumbered.

Finally, since it looks as if we are getting down to business, we need to attend to the removal process as well; it is part of the same Article 124 that is going to be amended. Impeachment involves getting signatures from MPs. On the one hand, it makes it difficult for even genuine complaints to proceed further. On the other hand, it politicises the process. One impeachment failed because the then ruling party abstained from voting, and two others were aborted by midstream resignations (civil servants are not allowed to resign in the middle of disciplinary inquiries; can judges be allowed to do so?). The proposed national judicial commission must therefore be in charge of the removal of judges as well.

The writer is a senior lawyer in the Supreme Court

In defence of the collegium

BY KT THOMAS PUBLISHED IN THE INDIAN EXPRESS

The appointment of judges at the level of the high courts and Supreme Court continues to be problematic, in spite of cosmetic changes brought in through judicial activism in two stages. What remains is known as the collegium system. It was formulated by a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court after hearing long arguments addressed by top-ranking counsel. Initially, the collegium system was generally welcomed, despite opposition from politicians on the ground that the judges had arrogated to themselves the power of choosing judges. But in due course, it received criticism from different quarters, including members of the Bar. It is true that the collegium system has remained in force for more than  15 years. As the years have passed, burgeoning criticism that the present system did not remedy the drawbacks of the erstwhile mechanism have eventually become more strident.

At least in a few instances, unsuitable persons have found their way to seats of judges in the high courts. It is, of course, a matter of relief that the number of such persons has not swelled to alarming proportions. At the same time, it would not be true to say that no unsuitable person has reached the Supreme Court bench through the collegium system. The lesson to learn is that however much improvement is sought to be achieved through changes to the appointments process, the efficacy of its working depends on the vision and dedication of the persons empowered  to manage the system.

The chairman of the Law Commission of India has suggested that a seven-member judicial appointments commission (JAC), with a preponderance of members from the judiciary, be instituted. But of what use are the proposed changes if some members of the JAC function in the same manner as before? What is the guarantee that only persons of impeccable and proven integrity, coupled with the moral strength to assert their dissent (if any) on record, would fill up the JAC? Having been a member of the collegium of the Supreme Court,  I know how outsiders seek (and get) access so as to canvass for the decision-making process. I doubt that the situation would change if the proposed composition of the JAC were to be implemented. I am also not prepared to say  that the selection of “eminent persons” would not become diluted in due course, particularly because of the vagueness  in standardising who these “eminent persons” can be. I am sceptical of the outcome of the JAC in the long run, given that the scope for manipulation and favouritism cannot be fully eliminated even within it.

A former chief justice of the Kerala High Court had evolved an experiment while adhering to the collegium mechanism. When there were three vacancies of Bar candidates, he invited recommendations from all his companion judges in the high court, requesting them to send at least five names each. He got 40 names altogether, and shortlisted them to 10. He studied their performance and presented his views before the other members of the collegium of the high court. When there was dissent, he expanded the three-member collegium and obtained their views also. He made the final recommendation to the Supreme Court. In that process, the Kerala High Court gained three very fine judges. I thought that the same could be followed by the chief justices of other high courts and, in fact, I wrote an article in support of it. But on deeper thought, I sensed that if the practice continued and remained in place for much longer, the scope for canvassing with other judges for interested persons would have increased greatly and the experiment would have been rendered ineffective.

The criticism that the executive has now no role in the appointment of judges is, to a great extent, misplaced. In my view, there should not be any dispute on the proposition that judges should have the first-stage opportunity to point out who the best candidates for judgeship are. But their judgements on that score cannot be treated as infallible. When names of candidates are sent by the collegium to the executive, it is definitely possible for the executive to conduct a thorough inquiry through such departmental agencies as they could trust. Then the executive can send back the names to the collegium for further consideration and a final decision. One change I wish to propose is to permit the executive to propose names to the collegium at the initial stage.

Whenever recommendations are to be made for more than two vacancies (it may go up to 15 and sometimes even to 20), there could be a temptation for members of the collegium to compromise in order to accommodate candidates on barter considerations. Whenever bulk recommendations have occurred in the past, some not-so-suitable (if not totally unsuitable) candidates have succeeded in getting access to the list. This defect can be effectively eliminated by restricting recommendations strictly to one or two vacancies at a time, and definitely no more. In my view, the existing system  can continue with the modifications indicated above.

The writer is a former judge  of the Supreme Court

Hanging in balance: No executive interference required

RAJINDER SACHAR IN THE INDIAN EXPRESS

The judiciary has been praised by some for its role in exposing corruption in politics, while others point to the defective method of selection of judges through the collegium system to criticise it. To prevent further easy public slapping of the judiciary, we must now finalise the method of appointment.

The suggested pattern of a judicial appointments commission broadly fills the void. It is headed by the chief justice of India (CJI) and includes the next two senior judges, the Union law minister, two eminent persons (emphasis added) to be selected by the prime minister, the CJI and the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha. Some rightly feel that “eminent persons” should be substituted with “eminent jurists”, because “eminence” by itself is too vague. Instead, “eminent jurist” would provide a larger field of academics, authors, outstanding lawyers (no longer practising, of course). The fear that the presence of a lay person would interfere with the independence of the judiciary is misplaced. As the Judicial Commission of New South Wales Annual Report said: “Judicial independence is not some kind of industrial benefit generously extended to judges and magistrates, it is [the] fundamental principle of our society’s constitutional arrangements.”

The provision with regard to the appointment of high court judges, however, states, unacceptably, that the JAC is only required to elicit (emphasis added) the views of the governor, chief minister and the chief justice of the high court. I can hardly see any relevance of eliciting the view of the chief minister separately from the governor. I, however, take strong objection to reducing the position of the chief justice of a high court to merely eliciting his view. The advice of the chief justice of a high court as to the suitability or otherwise of a person to be appointed a judge of a high court should normally be accepted.

Reportedly, though technically the collegium is being sought to be abolished, the CJI has asked chief justices of the high courts to consult their colleagues, even junior ones, as far as possible. But this suggestion may only be observed in the breach. I remember that in 1977, the Janata government’s informal suggestion that the chief justices of the high courts consult two senior colleagues was observed more in the breach. It was only when the collegium system was established that the chief justices of the high courts had no option but to consult their colleagues.

However, this did not mean that the government has accepted the collegium’s recommendation in all cases. In 1985, the chief justice of a high court and his two senior-most colleagues recommended four names, with the clarification that they must be appointed in the order in which the names were sent. This was done to prevent the government from picking and choosing on the specious argument that some names had not yet been cleared by the CBI and the appointments might be delayed, while those lower down the list could be appointed immediately. This was opposed by the chief justice, and the law ministry was so affronted that the government did not appoint any judge during his tenure. Afterwards, too, the law ministry first appointed new names and only later appointed those recommended by the earlier collegium. So the government’s intervention can only be checked by a strong judiciary. It is for this reason that I have reservations on doing away with collegiums entirely. The collegium system is welcome inasmuch as it constitutes a wider circle of three judges, rather than leaving it solely to the chief justice of the high court. The CJI’s advice to consult two more judges is welcome. I see no reason to abolish the collegium system at the high court level (which, after all, is only recommendatory). The appointments are now to be made under the provisions of the proposed JAC.

I am amazed that, so far, a serious self-inflected injury is being overlooked — that is, appointing the chief justices of high courts outside their parent court. I have never understood the logic of transferring the senior-most judge, whose turn to head the court in which he has worked for almost 10 to 15 years, and with the functioning and lower judiciary of which he is most familiar, has come. To transfer him to a new court for a period of one or two years or even less, to which he is a total stranger and most likely unaware of the names of his colleagues, is strange. At present, one has the embarrassing spectacle of a chief justice being transferred to a state where he cannot even understand the language. The chief justice of a high court should be the senior-most judge of the same court. This alone will lend strength and dignity to the high courts.

Section 8 of the new bill contemplates asking the state and Central governments to send recommendations for the selection of judges. I find this to be a frontal attack on the judiciary. After a JAC is constituted, the state or Central governments have no locus standi and should be outsiders in the process of selection. I agree though that the JAC should make public the names it is contemplating for appointments to high courts and the Supreme Court. This will make the process more open and participatory, and also negate the charge of secret manoeuvring in the appointment of judges.

The writer is a former chief justice of the Delhi High Court

Politically coloured, legally suspect

By: J.L. Gupta PUBLISHED IN THE INDIAN EXPRESS

The clamour against the courts has been continuous. Initially, there was talk of a “committed” judiciary. Then, of judicial accountability and transparency. And so on. The latest is — why should judges choose judges? Hence, the effort to replace the collegium by a Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC). The bill has already been passed in both Houses of Parliament. Is it the right way to do so? I think, No.

Let us see what is happening in the country. Who selects ministers? The prime minister and chief ministers. Who selects the generals? The generals. Who selects army commanders? The army. Who selects government servants? The government.

Why then do we want a different method of selection for the judiciary? Why should the judiciary not be allowed to select judges? Is it an effort to destroy the one institution that has performed and exposed scams and scandals like Coalgate and 2G?

The founding fathers created a judicial pyramid. The subordinate courts were the base. Then came district courts. The high courts followed at the state level. The Supreme Court was placed at the apex. They also laid down the procedure for the selection and appointment of judges. The selection and appointments of the officers in the subordinate and district courts are made in accordance with the rules framed and promulgated by the government in accordance with the Constitution. The “control” vests in the high court. In so far as appointments to the higher judiciary are concerned,

the matter was considered by the Supreme Court in the second and third judges’ cases.

The court’s dictum has been followed. Judges to the high courts and Supreme Court have been selected by collegiums for some time now. The scope for interference by the political executive has been reduced to a minimum. Consequently, criticism from different quarters is understandable. But can the JAC improve the quality of judges?

No system of selection can be absolutely perfect. Institutions run by human beings will reflect human frailties. A fact that deserves mention is that the Constitution itself provides for Union and state public service commissions to make selections to the various services. The commissions have been in place for a long time. Has their performance been beyond reproach or even satisfactory? Have these commissions not been described as “personal” service commissions? The kind of eminent persons proposed to be included in the JAC are usually members of the state and Union public service commissions too. Yet, what do we have? Petitions in courts alleging all kinds of malpractices. Still more, states have moved petitions, prosecuted members or chairpersons of the commissions for different irregularities and even offences. Would a similar commission for judicial appointments change everything for the better? Looks unlikely.

Second, the state is the single-largest litigant in the country. Should a litigant have any say whatsoever in the choice of judges?

Third, in a democracy, independence of the judiciary is of paramount importance. A fearless and independent judiciary is a basic feature of the Constitution of India. It is a part of the “basic structure” and should not be sacrificed at the altar of the executive’s anxiety or ego. Legally speaking, the validity of the proposed bill is extremely doubtful.

The members of the collegium also monitor the performance of judges and lawyers who have to be considered for appointment to the high courts or the Supreme Court. They examine judgments of the persons who are considered for elevation. So far as the JAC is concerned, the majority shall not have that opportunity. They will necessarily have to depend upon hearsay evidence. This will be totally improper.

It is alleged that the collegium does not have a mechanism to “verify the character and antecedents of judges.” I think, it is not so. The court and/ or the chief justice can always ask the concerned agencies to do the needful. In certain cases, it has been actually done. I think the fear is wholly unfounded.

It has been suggested that judges sometimes indulge in mutual give-and-take. As a result, some people who should not have become judges at all have been elevated to still higher positions and courts, it is argued. Assuming this to be correct, can anybody claim we are totally impervious to all kinds of political and social influences or pressures? Has it never happened that, at the highest level, files are held up till the name of a particular person is cleared by the collegium?

But is the JAC the solution? No!

A rare exception under the collegium system has the potential of becoming the rule when the final word is left to the executive. Are the series of scams and scandals that have taken place recently in India not enough to caution us about the state of political morality? The judiciary is one institution in India that has performed and delivered. We can tinker with it only at our own peril.

The writer is former chief justice,

Kerala High Court

‘If the judiciary is either equal or in a minority, I fear this Bill will be (legally) vulnerable’

PUBLISHED IN THE INDIAN EXPRESS

In this Idea Exchange moderated by Senior Editor (Legal Affairs) Maneesh Chhibber, Law Commission of India Chairman Justice A P Shah says most judges don’t believe the collegium system works and argues for a fixed tenure for CJI. This Idea Exchange took place before Parliament approved the new Bill for selection of judges

Maneesh Chhibber: Law Commission Chairperson Justice A P Shah submitted a report to the government on the collegium system. Incidentally, he is also one of the prominent victims of the collegium system.

Justice A P Shah: I read Fali Nariman’s article in The Indian Express. It seems he has suggested that the collegium system should be revamped. In my opinion, the collegium system is not a democratic institution; there are no checks and balances in it. If you let the same system continue without any meaningful voice to the executing civil society, even if you make it a little more transparent and a criterion is laid out, it may not improve the system itself.

I have been working on it for the past several days along with some of my colleagues and some people from outside. The government has not asked us to make a report, it is our initiative. At the Law Commission, we thought it’s a very important policy decision — whether you are going to have a judicial appointments commission to replace the present collegium system. It’s the Law Commission’s responsibility to make recommendations in that direction, but it’s not very clear whether it should go as a report or a consultation paper…

You will recall that there was a UPA Bill to bring the retirement age of high court judges on a par with that of the Supreme Court judges. The BJP opposed the Bill, and it is still pending. The only reason given in the Constituent Assembly debates was that high court judges may not opt for the Supreme Court if the retirement age is the same, because that is a kind of temptation to go to the Supreme Court, there is an additional three-year tenure, which I don’t think works today. There are two distinct advantages if it is brought on a par. First, the practice of lobbying and sycophancy, developed in recent times, will stop. Also, there will not be much heartburn because a person continues as an HC judge till 65. The second advantage is that you will be able to select judges at a young age. There is no rule but an unwritten convention that a person below the age of 45 will not be appointed in the HC, and a person below 55 will not be appointed in the SC. Look at the consequences: We are not getting good talent in the HC because once they cross 45, they would be more entrenched in practice. This seniority should really go.

Today, the Supreme Court is packed with (former high court) chief justices who are also the senior-most; there is no search for good talent. Once it is on a par, perhaps you would be able to select judges at a young age and they will continue on the bench for a longer period of time. In almost all countries, judges at the apex court have a long tenure — 10 years is the minimum, it should be 10-15 years. According to me, this (age bar) is rather arbitrary and in the committee meeting, everybody was almost unanimous that seniority should not be the criterion, you need to bring in young people.

And the last point is the fixed tenure of the chief justice. We are working on that. Till 2022, no chief justice will get a tenure of more than a year; the present Chief Justice gets only four-five months. My logic is that it should be five years, because the prime minister gets a five-year tenure, Parliament gets five years, so the chief justice should also get five years. But it may be less — three or two years.

The way the Supreme Court works is very different from what was contemplated by the law framers. One of the reasons there is no embargo against judges taking up post-retirement assignments in the government was because in the Constituent Assembly Dr B R Ambedkar had said that the government has only 5 per cent litigation, and since the government is not a major litigant, why prevent retired judges from accepting post-retirement assignments? That logic is no longer relevant because 60 per cent of the litigations are by the government. So, there may not be a complete bar, but a cooling-off period is very necessary. It could be one or  two years, but there should be a cooling-off period.

Maneesh Chhibber: Don’t you think that the government or politicians are trying to use this clamour against the judiciary as an excuse to undo the collegium system brought in by the Supreme Court?

The UPA Bill (which was not passed) said that the Judicial Appointments Commission should have three judges and three non-judges, but there was an attempt to have an amendment, to have a seventh member. And the seventh member, as per the amendment, was to be a non-judge. So virtually, judges will be in a minority. One suggestion was that there should be two non-judges and an eminent person should be given a veto. If both of them decide to oppose the appointment, then it should not be made. There is a fear (that this is a move to undo the collegium system), and I can’t say no to that.

Arun sukumar: Would the situation be any different if the collegium decisions were to be made public under RTI?

Under RTI, the questions that come up relate to justification for making an appointment or if somebody is being overlooked, or why a particular candidate was chosen for the high court. But the reasons are not given. So how is RTI going to help? RTI’s objective is to bring transparency, but RTI itself is not sufficient. Transparency would come only if you make it known that there are vacancies, you get nominations from the stakeholders concerned, have mandatory consultations with the high courts, state governments and maybe the Bar, and then declare the names before they are finalised, so that people know. I’m not in favour of interviews in public or any such American system, but we must bring in some sort of transparency, and that can’t be achieved by an RTI application.

Maneesh Chhibber: At the meeting which the government called to discuss the Judicial Appointments Commission, one of the biggest concerns was that whatever was brought in, the JAC should meet the standard set by the judiciary. What do you think is that standard?

Upendra Baxi suggested that you prepare a Bill and make a presidential reference to the Supreme Court. Let the Supreme Court examine it, the way it has done in the past. This was a good idea according to me, but it was felt, and may be justifiably, that it takes time. The other was what Nariman suggested. I really liked the idea — have a dialogue, let the judiciary participate in that dialogue. That’s a great idea — let them at least listen to voices of people or other stakeholders. My fear is that if the judiciary is either equal or in a minority, this Bill will become (legally) vulnerable.

Dilip Bobb: You have been consulting colleagues in the judiciary. What is their reaction to your suggestions, including the cooling-off period?

The problem is that most judges — till they are in the collegium — defend the collegium system because it is very difficult for a serving judge (to criticise it). Nobody honestly believes that this system works well. Many retired judges, barring the exception of former chief justice (Altamas) Kabir and a few others, believe that this system has not worked.

About cooling-off period, what is bad about post-retirement assignments is that for one post, there are 10 aspirants. This leads to unfortunate developments.

Seema Chishti: You were talking of an eminent person being selected. Isn’t that problematic?

The problem is manifold. First, the Constitution uses the words ‘distinguished jurist’. Not a single person was appointed in the past 60 years in that category. During the debates in the Constituent Assembly, they gave the example of Felix Frankfurter. He was a great professor and was taken from a university to the American Supreme Court; he was not a practising lawyer. What they really had in mind was an academic. If I look at the Indian scenario, Prof N R Madhava Menon or Prof Upendra Baxi would have been brought to the Supreme Court in that category. But that jurist can be anyone. Nariman has contributed greatly in the legal frame, he has written several books, perhaps in that sense he would know.

The absence of a non-legal person would give a sense of incompleteness; it should not be a closed-door affair for the legal community, there should be an eminent person, for instance, our past president A P J Abdul Kalam. There are many such eminent persons, who can be picked by the PM, Leader of Opposition and the Chief Justice of India.

Vandita Mishra: The debate is also about the executive versus the judiciary, which is an age-old tussle. Do you see the present as a special moment where there is a confrontation developing between the executive and the judiciary? Is the judiciary more on the backfoot and the executive more aggressive than in the past?

The real issue is, who will have the last word, who will be the custodian of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has said that the court will have the last word in any amendment. But then coming to narrower issues of appointments, who will have the last word? Judges say that judiciary will have the last word.

Vandita Mishra: The executive is more aggressive because of its majority. What about the judiciary, what is the special moment that the judiciary finds itself in today?

Very broadly, the judiciary is entering into several areas where it should not be. There is a tremendous expanse of the judiciary’s powers and then with the PILs, it is armed with so many weapons. It is becoming very powerful. With that, the scrutiny is becoming extremely focused by the media and several other bodies. One significant development was the decision of the collegium on Karnataka judges.

Rakesh Sinha: As the law minister in A B Vajpayee’s government, Arun Jaitley had moved an amendment for scrapping the collegium.

You are right. There were seven-eight proposals after 1993. And they gave different combinations. In some proposals, even the legislature was included, apart from the executive. In some proposals, it was completely judge-dominant. We are looking into all the proposals.

Maneesh Chhibber: At the meeting called by the government, one got the feeling that the general consensus was that the government should come up with a proposal, have at least one more round of talks with the stakeholders. But it appears the Cabinet is going to clear the Bill.

I distinctly remember Anil Diwan saying that, ‘Instead of holding such meetings, why don’t you draft a Bill and then come to us?’. That is a good idea.

Seema Chishti: Regarding the recent instance of the Delhi Assembly case being heard by the Constitution bench, should the court get into this at all? In an earlier instance, the court had said that the Jharkhand Assembly should have a session at 11.30 am.

I don’t want to make any comment on that. The argument being made is that it is clear the Delhi government is not going to be constituted (any time soon). But the Constitution gives power to the executive that the suspension can continue up to one year. To what extent is judicial review  permissible is a debatable issue.

P Vaidyanathan Iyer: We had Iqbal Chagla as our guest in Mumbai and he said that in the ’60s and ’70s, the Bar used to be very strong. At times it took up issues of corruption and stalled appointments. Do you think that today, there is nothing that the Bar stands up for?

A recent example is P D Dinakaran’s case — the Bar took up that case. I have seen lawyers acting as some sort of vigilance on wrong appointments. But their number is on the decline. The Bar should be more alert.

Vandita Mishra: What is your view on the mechanism of fast-track courts (for legislators)?

Let me tell you about the Law Commission’s report. The Commission felt that several previous committees disqualified a person if he was facing a serious criminal charge, punishable with five or more years in jail. The debate is, how can you expel a person when he is merely facing a charge; there is no determination. And there is misuse of this provision. Criminalisation of politics is a very serious issue. So if you believe that lawbreakers should not be lawmakers, then we need to have a system where we keep such people out. We went by the reasoning of the Supreme Court judgment in the CVC case that it is protecting institutional integrity.

There is a difference between filing a chargesheet and framing of a charge. We suggested three safeguards.
First, the charge should be framed at least one year prior to the elections. Second, such disqualification should not continue beyond six years. If within six years a person’s case is not decided, he or she should be allowed (to continue). Then we realised what happens if the charge is framed within one year and the person gets elected. Or what happens if the charge is framed after he is elected. In that context, we decided that the case should be decided within one year.

Vandita Mishra: So legislators should be singled out for fast-track, time-bound trial.

It should be done. That’s a deterrent.

Vandita Mishra: But some people would say that rapists should be singled out, not legislators.
In the case of rapists, it is already happening.

Aneesha Mathur: In your recent report you have mentioned fast-tracking, but you have also said that there may be a trade-off between the quality and quantity of judgments.
Most judges write bad judgments. It should be properly administered justice and in the name of fast-tracking you should not be affecting the quality.

Rakesh Sinha: A lower court judge in Madhya Pradesh recently wrote to the Chief Justice of India saying a high court judge was exploiting her and that she was forced to resign.

It is a very serious complaint and if it is found true prima facie on inquiry, then the logical step would be to withdraw the judicial person, and initiate impeachment proceedings.

Transcribed by Vandana Kalra & Debesh Banerjee

Needed: Dialogue, statesmanship

BY FALI S NARIMAN PUBLISHED IN THE INDIAN EXPRESS

Because we cannot risk another judicial decision on appointments, writes FALI S. NARIMAN.

In the Constitution of India, 1950, the appointing authority for judges in the higher judiciary is the government of India, acting in the name of the president of India. Judges of the Supreme Court are appointed after consultation with the chief justice of India (CJI) and other judges of the Supreme Court (or high courts) as the appointing authority deems necessary for the purpose; judges of high courts are appointed after consultation with the CJI, the governor of the concerned state and the chief justice of the concerned high court. This simply worded prescription — expressed in Articles 124(2) and 217(1) — worked well in practice for the first two decades. By convention, whosoever the CJI recommended as judge was, almost invariably, appointed; whom the CJI did not recommend was not appointed.

But in 1981, in the S.P. Gupta case, much later known as the “first judge’s case”, a bench of seven judges of the Supreme Court presided over by Justice P.N. Bhagwati held (4:3) that the recommendations of the CJI for judges to be appointed in the higher judiciary were, constitutionally, not binding on the government of India. The (Congress) government, then in office, was delighted. It was now payback time. So when Bhagwati assumed office as CJI, the Congress government, still in office, declined to appoint judges recommended by him, since it was he who had judicially declared (in the S.P. Gupta case) that “consultation” in Article 124 did not mean “concurrence”.

It was much later, with the accumulated experience of the deleterious consequences flowing from the majority judgment in the first judges case, that new faces on the bench decided to take a “fresh look” at Article 124(2). In what has now become known as the “second judges case” (1993), a bench of nine judges held (by a majority, 7:2) that a collegiate opinion of a collectivity of judges was to be preferred to the opinion of the CJI. It also said that if the government did not accept the “recommendation” of the “collegium” (then consisting of the three senior-most judges), it would be presumed that the government had not acted bona fide.

Even after the judgment in the second judges case, recommendations made by the collegium were not made in the spirit in which the new doctrine had been propounded, since the collegiate of the three highest constitutional functionaries (the senior-most judges of the court) could not see eye to eye in the matter of appointment of judges to the higher judiciary. So when (again, by convention) the then senior-most judge, Justice M.M. Punchhi, became the CJI in January 1998 and recommended, with the concurrence of his two senior-most colleagues, that a particular list of five named persons be appointed to fill the vacancies in the highest court (all strictly in accordance with the methodology laid down in the second judges case), the government took exception to some of the names — justifiably, according to disinterested and knowledgeable persons.

But the CJI was adamant. When the government said that some of the names suggested could be accepted, but not all, the CJI said: “It will be all or none.” Apprehending the initiation of contempt proceedings, the government of the day (the NDA government with the BJP in the driving seat) thought it expedient to seek a presidential reference under Article 143 of the Constitution for the advisory opinion of the Supreme Court on certain dicta expressed in the second judges case.

All that ultimately happened after the presidential reference was that the collegiate was enlarged (by judicial diktat) from three to five of the senior-most justices, perhaps on the principle that there was greater safety in larger numbers. Meanwhile, Chief Justice Punchhi demitted office since he had reached the constitutional age of retirement. His successor, along with the four senior-most justices in the collegium, recommended names of appointees, which were accepted. This shows (it is said) that the collegium system worked. The response of lawyers has been, “Yes, but not always in this manner.”

The truth is that the system of recommendation for judicial appointments by a collegium of the five senior-most judges (like that of the three that went before) is not institutionalised: no mechanism is prescribed (by the collegium itself), no office is set up, no data gathered in advance, no criteria evolved as to who among the high court judges — all aspirants to a place in the Supreme Court — should be recommended. There is no reason given as to why a broad consensus among all the justices of the Supreme Court is not to be preferred to the views only of the five senior-most.

The entire system operates ad hoc, based on no principle. And the choice of judges to be recommended has varied in quality with the collegium’s fast-changing composition. The system has failed, according to me and many others. But in the opinion of the judges, including a succession of chief justices of India, it has not. More importantly, the BJP government that is now in office had, as part of the NDA government in 1998, categorically informed the nine-judge bench hearing the presidential reference that it was not seeking a review of the judgment in the second judges case — the judgment that first initiated the novel idea of a “collegium” of senior-most judges.

In this situation, what would be the right thing to do? I believe that before embarking on the new experiment of a broad-based National Judicial Commission, even one loaded with a majority of sitting judges as members, it is imperative that there should be meaningful dialogue between the executive and the collectivity of all the judges of the Supreme Court (represented by its chief justice), so that a mutually acceptable solution can be found. It must be found. Statesmanship is the need of the hour, because we cannot risk another judicial decision. The executive, the judges and the lawyers must resolve to avoid, at all cost, a fourth judges case.

The writer is a constitutional jurist and senior advocate to the Supreme Court

A case for two commissions

BY T R ANDHYARUJINA PUBLISHED IN THE INDIAN EXPRESS

There is now a consensus amongst judges, lawyers and legislators that the present system of appointment of judges to superior courts by a collegium of Supreme Court judges requires to be changed for a better one. There are sound reasons for this move.

First, the appointment of judges by the Supreme Court collegium has no foundation in our Constitution. Article 124 of the Constitution provides that every judge of the Supreme Court is to be appointed by the president after consultation with the chief justice of the Supreme Court and other judges of the Supreme Court and high courts. Similar power is given by Article 217 to the president in consultation with the chief justice of India (CJI), the governor of the state and chief justice of the high court for the appointment of judges to high courts.

In 1981, in what is known as the first judges’ case, the Supreme Court held that the power of appointment of judges of the superior courts resided solely and exclusively in the president, that is, the Central government, subject to full and effective consultation with the constitutional functionaries referred to in Articles 124 and 217. However, in 1992, the Supreme Court, in the second judges’ case, professing to safeguard the independence of the judiciary, reversed the first verdict and rewrote the constitutional provisions to hold that the primacy in the appointment of a judge of the Supreme Court was with the CJI, who would make his recommendation to the president after consultation with two of his senior judges. The president would only have the limited power of expressing his doubts on the recommendation of the CJI. The president’s doubts would not however prevail if the CJI reiterated his recommendation on the appointment of the judge. In a later judgment, known as the third judges’ case, the Supreme Court diluted the primacy of the CJI, and gave the power of appointment to a collegium of the CJI and four of his senior-most colleagues.

The judgments in the second and third judges’ cases are an extraordinary tour de force in the name of securing the independence of the judiciary. The court has rewritten the provisions of the Constitution for the appointment of judges. The executive’s function in the appointment process has for all practical purposes been eliminated and reduced to the formal approving of a recommendation made by the CJI and his collegium. “Consultation” with the CJI in the Constitution has been transmuted into an original power to appoint by the CJI and a collegium. The Constituent Assembly’s view at the time of enacting the constitutional provisions, that the CJI should not be the final appointing authority, was disregarded by the court. In no jurisdiction in the world do judges appoint judges.

Even if the collegium’s method for the appointment of judges has no foundation in the Constitution, it could have been excused had the system worked satisfactorily, but unfortunately, for over 20 years, it has not. In the first instance, the collegium system lacks transparency and is secretive. The public is not aware of the selection of a judge until his name is forwarded to the government by the collegium. Second, there have been instances of judges being selected or not selected due to favouritism or prejudice of members of the collegium. Third, selection on competitive merit of the appointees is discarded and judges are generally appointed to the Supreme Court on their seniority in ranking in the high courts. The late Justice J.S. Verma, principal author of the second judges’ judgment, later admitted that the collegium system had failed.

Should the earlier system of the exective appointing judges after proper consultation be restored? Paradoxically, from 1950 to 1973, some of the most outstanding judges of our Supreme Court were appointed through this system. Eminent judges like Michael Kirby of the Australian High Court are strongly in favour of restoring the old system, with control over it by Parliament. It was only during the period of the Emergency that this system was subverted, which led to the judiciary appropriating the power in the second judges’ case. Even today, in Australia and Canada, it is the executive that appoints judges after proper consultation.

To introduce a Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) in India is a fundamental change in the Constitution. Such a change requires careful consideration and evaluation of the system. It is important to know that, except for the judicial appointment commission of the UK introduced by the Constitutional Reform Act, 2005, such commissions have not been successful elsewhere. The South African constitution provides for a judicial appointment commission, but its working is far from satisfactory and at times appointments have been influenced by the government. The same is true of judicial appointment commissions in other states in Africa.

If the JAC is to be introduced in India, its composition should be made part of the Constitution itself and not left to ordinary legislation by Parliament. There should be proper representation of members, including of the legal profession, in the JAC. The JAC will be over-stressed and overworked if it has to make appointments for 31 judges to the Supreme Court and over 800 judges to the 24 high courts. The CJI and two senior-most judges, who are to be part of the commission, would have to work in the commission to the neglect of their primary judicial duties of hearing and deciding cases. There ought to be two separate judicial commissions, therefore, one for the Supreme Court and the other for the high courts. The JAC for high courts ought to

be composed of retired judges of the Supreme Court or high courts, in addition to other members. In the UK, there are separate selecting bodies for high court and for supreme court. The overriding factor will be the merit of the candidate, but the commission, as in the UK, should consider diversity, namely, appointment of women judges and judges of various regions without of course sacrificing merit.

Overall, the creation of a JAC requires careful consideration and extensive consultation with all sections of the public, including the CJI. The present law minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, rightly convened a meeting on July 28 of judges and lawyers and jurists to discuss the changes to be made. It is to be hoped that such consultations will be continued before a legislation is introduced. The collegium system has not worked, but we should not have a situation where we jump from the frying pan of the collegium to the burning fire of a chaotic National Judicial Commission.

The writer is a senior advocate of the Supreme Court and former Solicitor General of India

First, insulate the judge from politics

BY RAMJETHMALANI PUBLISHED IN THE INDIAN EXPRESS

The thesis of ‘committed’ judiciary has been abandoned, but its practice continues unabated. That is the real problem, writes RAM JETHMALANI.

A judge is the guardian of the small man and his bundle of rights, which enable him to realise his fullest material, moral and spiritual potential, and expand to the utmost frontiers of his body, mind and soul. No judge must aspire to harmony with the legislature and executive. Every judge must brace himself for a life of tension with both in the intelligent and stout defence of his ward, who needs constant protection against the insolence of unfeeling officials, the venality of politicians and the misdeeds of wicked neighbours and fellow citizens. Every court is essentially a court of wards; the Supreme Court has the entire citizenry as its ward. Our judges need not be sensitive to the oft-mounted attack that they are not elected and are, therefore, unaccountable and undemocratic.

This role of the judge makes one think about elected judges. But the system of elected judges has been tried elsewhere and I believe that it has produced jokes. The most instructive joke that you will find is that in a certain US state, the Democratic Party found a judge paralysed from the waist downwards and invariably, in elections, he won the sympathy vote. He triumphed in four successive elections but before the fifth, a Republican Party official said to his superior, “Sir, we have found a solution to our problem.” He asked, “What is it?” The answer: “Sir, this time we have found a judge who is paralysed from the waist upwards.” It will not work in India anyway.

Economics may have dominated the world most of the time and probably does dominate in some sense even now. But today, politics has overtaken economics in its influence. In the past few decades, all institutions, including the judiciary and of course the Bar, have struggled with the temptations of politics. Judges, like other mortals, are attracted to politics, particularly aspiring ones who consider favours from a ruling party to be stepping stones for upward mobility in the field. Usually, but not always, judges do often violate their oath of administering justice without fear or favour. Favours done have to be returned, feel some. We have therefore to evolve an effective mechanism of insulating judges against politics and involvement in political machinations of the kind that have disgraced some sections in the past not only in this country, but also elsewhere.
Politicians as a class and the executive in power must therefore have no voice in the appointment of judges. The executive is the biggest litigant in cases of citizen complaints of the oft-corrupt misuse of executive powers. Even a good judge appointed by a corrupt minister will not command public confidence. The second judges case, the origin of the present collegium system, was a correct decision, and the current system is vastly superior to the one it supplemented. It was the one that produced the tellingly sarcastic comment, “It has created two kinds of judges — those who know the law and those who know the law minister.”

South Africa, in its new constitution, adopted the model of a judicial commission as the method of selection, which has been operational since 1996. The law minister is formally consulted and he makes his comments upon the appointees or recommendees of the judiciary. The comments of the law minister are considered with respect and attention, but the final word lies with the commission. I am committed to this mechanism as our final solution. I must hasten to explain why.

I agree with the weighty opinion of my erudite friend, senior counsel Anil Divan, in his recent article in The Hindu: “The present secretive process followed by the collegium excludes public scrutiny, violates the citizen’s right to know and leads to diminishing respect for the judiciary.” Some bad appointments produced by this system are also notorious.
While corruption continues to grow like a galloping cancer in every branch of life, the judges seem to reciprocate by producing a strange jurisprudence that only protects the corrupt. The law of contempt and the difficulties of proving judicial corruption deter cautious lawyers. But the common man, not so inhibited, produces an impressive volume of popular corruption folklore.

The real decline of judicial character started in 1973. Mohan Kumaramangalam, a distinguished lawyer and politician, claimed that judicial appointments could not be made without reference to the social philosophy of the judges. The judge, being an important decision-maker, makes decisions that are bound to affect the lives of the people, and his decisions are influenced by his social philosophy. Therefore, independent India should have judges who are “committed” not only to the social philosophy of the Constitution, but also to that of the government. This was controversial. However, Indira Gandhi’s government implemented his views during the Emergency.

Though the Kumaramangalam thesis has now been abandoned, its practice continues unabated. While judges associated with the ruling establishment are invariably appointed, those having any form of association with opposition parties are scrupulously avoided. How successive chief justices, who are supposed to be totally judicial even in the discharge of their administrative function, habitually enter into convenient compromises escapes comprehension. The inevitable answer is the creation of a national judicial commission in which the judiciary, government, opposition, the Bar and academic community have an equal voice. Judges should hold office only during the pleasure of the commission. It should have the power to appoint, transfer and dismiss — of course, in accordance with procedure established by law, or what is also known as due process. The Lokpal may well be a useful addition to the list of participants.

The 79th report of the Law Commission suggested ways to plug loopholes in the existing system of appointment of Supreme Court judges. No one should be appointed a judge of the Supreme Court unless, for a period of not less than seven years, he has snapped all affiliations with political parties and unless, during the preceding seven years, he has distinguished himself for his independence, dispassionate approach and freedom from political prejudice.

The practising Bar is the constituency of a judge. If he cannot retain its confidence, he must gracefully quit office. It is just not true that only weak and obliging judges are popular with the Bar. Members of the Bar know the black sheep on the bench. No wonder, the American Bar Association can, by its adverse criticism, make the mighty president of the US withdraw his nominees for judicial office. A lord chancellor of England admitted that if he made an unworthy appointment, he could not possibly look into the eyes of the lawyers at Bar dinners.

The writer, a lawyer and Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan, is a former Union law minister (June 1999-July 2000)

Change must respect basic structure

BY UPENDRA BAXI PUBLISHED IN THE  INDIAN EXPRESS

The relationship between “democracy” and “secrecy” has always been debated, and it has been highlighted by the system of judicial appointments. The proposed judicial appointments commission (JAC) seeks to partly answer that question. Under review is the judicial collegium method of appointments, in use since the 1990s (which consists today in the supremacy of five senior-most justices of the Supreme Court, including the chief justice of India), as against the constitutional method in place between the 1950s and the 1990s (where the executive nominated candidates in consultation with the CJI and such other justices as it deemed fit).

Neither method can be said to have failed or succeeded, because the citizen has no way of knowing who the candidates are, how they are selected and why. No empirical study of judicial appointments is possible because the records are not available, and like the electoral nomination of candidates, the right to information does not exist so far as judicial elevations or transfers of high court justices are concerned. Stories in which judges, lawyers, law ministers and journalists tell us about the “system” are abundant, but such anecdotal evidence is hearsay and not ordinarily admissible in a court of law.

In the three judges cases, including a reference for advisory opinion, the court arrogated the power to elevate (and transfer high court) justices through a tortured interpretation of Articles 124 and 217 of the Constitution, by saying that the word “consultation” shall mean the “consent” of the CJI. But a constitutional convention giving primacy to the CJI was already in place — according to the law secretary’s affidavit, only seven out of some 348 recommendations were negatived by the Central government. If the system of executive nomination has worked so well, why the change?

Are the CJIs, in some cases, constrained to approve executive-dominated elevations? Justice Markandey Katju’s recent expose suggests that the CJI is vulnerable to alleged manoeuvring by the prime minister’s office. The justices in the judges cases seemed to think so, given that they accorded primacy first to the CJI, then to two judges and the CJI, and finally to a collegium of five justices.

To its credit, the UPA government introduced nearly half a dozen bills for judicial appointments and transfers, and contemplated a slew of measures on judicial standards, accountability, non-impeachment offences and transparency of the judicial process. The new government is espousing the cause; it clearly disfavours the political bravado that inspired a Union law minister to say that he had justices in his pockets; this is no longer the signature tune of modern governance. Rather, the state now wants a JAC that would avoid the vices of politicians appointing judges, and of the justices appointing their own.

This is welcome, as is the agreement that the senior-most judge may only be the CJI (at least till 2021, when even reforms contemplating a minimum tenure for the CJI may occur). The many UPA bills made the CJI the chair of the JAC, converged in making two senior-most justices of the Supreme Court members, provided a

process to identify two eminent citizens, and finally culminated in the 120th constitutional amendment bill, which too lapsed in the Lok Sabha. The NDA is likely to revive the amendment and bill in the new Lok Sabha. The text of the bills, the debates in Parliament as they occurred, the Law Commission’s report and other reports make compulsory, if dull, reading on this vexed subject.

In a consultation with eminent jurists convened by the Union law minister on July 28, while most went to the extent of saying that the judicial collegium had failed and agreed that the system of appointments needed to be changed, all the “jurists” endorsed the “dominance” of the CJI and his senior companions. If the advice of the CJI and his companion justices is to have an “edge” or “dominance”, how is it to be achieved? Should the JAC then adopt a weighted voting procedure, not unlike the United Nations Security Council? If the JAC is to decide by consensus, what will happen if the justices do not yield? What if some other eminent members, including the Union law minister, remain recalcitrant? And how much weight, if any, should be given to the Intelligence Bureau reports on prospective candidates?

A greater fundamental difficulty is posed by the basic structure doctrine. I have previously argued in these pages (‘Just governance’, IE, June 10) and at a New Delhi consultation that the best course is to obtain an advisory opinion from the Supreme Court on a draft amendment bill, considering whether abolition of the judicial collegium offends the basic structure and if it does, how the alternate JAC could be made constitutionally compatible. Already, the CJI has made it clear that the matter can only be settled in a judicial opinion; since the judges cases were decided judicially, no question arises of a mere administrative order by the court.

The court may advise the president that the basic structure is not violated or that certain changes to the JAC could save it from the indictment of offending it. This will result in a healthy dialogue on system change and collaboration, rather than an avoidable conflict between Parliament and the Supreme Court.

The basic structure here is the independence of the judiciary and judicial review. It is this power that ultimately decides the essential features of the Constitution. Appointments and transfers of justices definitely affect the basic structure, and the court should have a say in it. The executive may present evidence before the justices on why the judicial architecture needs to be reformed, and how the judicial collegium has “failed” the nation. Since almost all the leaders of the Bar believe that the judicial collegium has “failed” in drawing the best and brightest to become justices, they should have little difficulty in persuading the court.

The argument against an advisory opinion is that it would take undue time. But the 2G reference was relatively expeditiously disposed; the non-collegium justices would be justified in accelerating the opinion. In any event, the time taken for the reference will be democratically well-invested. The alternative of an adversarial proceeding, where the court may continue via a stay order to make appointments and transfers, scarcely advances the cause. Even under Kesavananda Bharati vs State of Kerala (which enshrined the basic structure doctrine), Parliament has plenary powers to amend the Constitution. However, enacting the JAC without consulting the court may invite judicial wrath, and even lead to a constitutional crisis.

The writer is professor of law, University of Warwick, and former vice chancellor of the Universities of South Gujarat and Delhi