JUDICIARY 2 LAST

The sources said the chief ministers, as also advocates The sources said the chief ministers, as also advocatesgeneral, should also be allowed to suggest candidates to thehigh court collegium of their respective states. The AttorneyGeneral, the sources said, should be allowed to suggest namesof candidates for the Supreme Court. While agreeing to the demand of the SC collegium thatseniority-cum-merit and not merit-cum-seniority should be thecriteria for selection, the government has said thatgeographic reasons — for example, too many judges from aparticular high court, inclusion of SCs, STs and women,outstanding performance of a judge and poor performance of aChief Justice could used as grounds to overlook seniority. Thereasons can be recorded in writing. While leaving it to the judiciary to fix an age at whicha person can become a judge, the government has made it clearthat the age once fixed should not be flexible. This, thesources said, will check favouritism. Despite the Chief Justice of India rejecting the clause onhaving evaluation and appraisal committees that the SupremeCourt and high court level, the government has once againpressed for it. The committees can have either retired or serving judges,which the Chief Justice of a high court or the CJI in case ofthe apex court can decide. The committee at the Supreme Court will screen thecandidates before the names are sent to the SC collegium for afinal call, it will also go through the records of thecommittees of the high courts as part of the ‘doublefiltration’ process to ensure that meritorious names are notleft out. The issue of disposal of complaints have been left to thein house mechanism of the judiciary to tackle, they said. Against the back drop of outburst by CJI T S Thakur ondelayed appointment of judges, the sources said betweenAugust, 2014, when the National Judicial AppointmentsCommission law came into being and December, 2015 when the SCorder on ways to improve collegium system was delivered, thegovernment had no say in stalling judicial appointments. In January, then Law Minister D V Sadananda Gowda hadwritten to the CJI, saying till the new MoP is finalised,appointments can place based on the prevailing MoP. They said between January and now, 52 judges have beenappointed to the high courts, four to the Supreme Court and110 additional judges in high courts have been made permanentjudges. Nine high court chief justices have been confirmed and 28transfers affected. A total of 250 proposals are in thepipeline, they said. PTI NABZMN