The Supreme Court on Friday pulled up the Centre for sitting on its recommendations for appointments and transfers of judges to high courts across the country for months and asked whether the Narendra Modi government was trying to bring the entire judicial system to a grinding halt.
A three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and Justices A.M. Kanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud told attorney general Mukul Rohatgi, “We have a chart here detailing the list of collegium recommendations for appointments and transfers. We can give it to you. There are 75 names of high court judges recommended by the collegium. These include names for appointments and transfers of high court judges, including Chief Justices. There is nothing on them from your side so far If you have a problem with a name suggested by us, send the file back to us. We will look into it.”
Not satisfied by Mr Rohatgi’s assurance to take it up at the “highest level”, CJI Thakur said, “The recommendations were sent in February and March and some in April. Still you are sitting over the files Don’t force us to ask where the files are... Don’t force us to judicially intervene... Don’t force us to pass orders to remove this logjam Don’t try to bring this institution to a grinding halt... That’s not the right thing to do.”
“I will take it up at the highest level and will come back to the court,” Mr Rohatgi told the bench and pleaded that no notice be issued for the time being on the PIL filed by 1971 war veteran Lieutenant Colonel Anil Kabotra on the issue.
“Why there is mistrust The government may be working on the draft Memorandum of Procedure for appointment of judges, but that does not give them the excuse to freeze appointments in the meanwhile This is some kind of a logjam and this whole situation is getting very difficult.”
Referring to the recommendation to transfer the Chief Justice of Uttarakhand HC K.M. Joseph as CJ of the Hyderabad high court for AP and Telangana that’s pending with the government, Chief Justice Thakur said, “Most high courts are working with only 40 per cent of their sanctioned strength and people are languishing in jails for 13 years for a hearing. In Allahabad there is a pendency of over 10 lakh cases. Will you wait till the accused complete a life sentence ”
The collegium headed by CJI Thakur and the Centre have been at loggerheads over the process of appointments.
Initially, over 400 vacancies, pending since April 2015, had not been filled up. Subsequently recommendations were made from February this year. Of the over 160 recommendations, the Centre cleared 55, but the rest have not being processed, resulting in most high courts functioning with less than 50 per cent capacity and accumulation of cases.
The CJI observed: “You can’t leave a situation where courts are allowed to be shut down. Accessibility to courts can’t be allowed to come to a grinding halt. In February some judges were transferred to other HCs and still they are not considered It gives a wrong impression.”
The Bench posted the matter for further hearing after four weeks to enable the AG to take instructions and inform the court about the progress on pending cases.
