The Centre is in the midst of a row with the Supreme Court over the collegium system.
New Delhi:
The highest number of judges were appointed to various high courts this year, the government told parliament in the midst of a row with the Supreme Court over the collegium system for judges’ appointments.
As many as 165 High Court judges were appointed, “the highest in a calendar year”, Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said yesterday in a written reply in Rajya Sabha.
There are 331 vacancies – that is a third of the sanctioned strength of 1,108 judges – the government said.
“Against the vacancy of 331, 147 proposals received from High Courts are at various stages of processing between Government and the Supreme Court collegium,” said the Law Minister.
Mr Rijiju said the government has recently sent back 20 names recommended for high courts by the collegium or panel of senior most Supreme Court judges.
For 184 vacancies, recommendations from High Court collegiums “are yet to be received”, he added.
From May 2014 to now, 46 Judges have been appointed to the Supreme Court. “853 new judges were appointed and 621 additional judges were made permanent in the High Courts,” he said.
The minister also said that the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act of 2014 was “declared unconstitutional and void” by the Supreme Court in 2015″. All current appointments in the higher judiciary were being made according to the collegium system, he pointed out.
The government made the statement on record appointments against the backdrop of a war of words with the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court had recently questioned the delay in government clearances on judicial appointments. The Centre cannot hold names back without mentioning its reservations, the top court said. “Once the Collegium reiterates a name, it is end of the chapter… It (the government) is crossing the Rubicon by keeping the names pending like this,” the Supreme Court said.
“Please resolve this… don’t make us take judicial decisions. It cannot be that you can withhold names; it frustrates the whole system… And sometimes when you appoint, you pick up some names from the list and not clear others. What you do is you effectively disrupt the seniority,” the court emphasized.
The Supreme Court also suggested that the government was not happy that the National Judicial Appointments Commission – set up by the BJP-led government through a law enacted in 2014 -was scrapped by the court.
The commission gave the government a major role in judges’ appointments.
The Law Minister has repeatedly raised his objections to the collegium system, calling it “alien” to the constitution.
Even yesterday Mr Rijiju said in parliament: “Unless the procedure of appointment of judges changes, the issue of high judicial vacancies will keep cropping up.”
He said it was worrying that more than five crore cases were pending across the country, and said it was partly because of judges’ vacancies.
“The government took many steps to reduce the pendency of cases, but the government has a very limited role in filling vacancies of judges. The collegium chooses names, and apart from that, the government has no right to appoint judges,” Mr Rijiju said.
“I don’t want to say much as it may seem like the government interfering in the judiciary. But the spirit of the Constitution says it is the government’s right to appoint judges. It changed after 1993,” he said.
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