Kiren Rijiju: Received representations on lack of transparency in Collegium system

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 22

The government has been receiving representations from “diverse sources” on lack of transparency, objectivity and social diversity in the Collegium system of appointing judges to the Supreme Court and high court with the request to improve the mechanism, the government told Parliament on Thursday.

Doubt over objectivity

Representations from diverse sources on lack of objectivity and social diversity in the Collegium system of appointment of judges to the constitutional courts are received from time to time with the request to improve it. — Kiren Rijiju, Law minister

In a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said the government had sent the suggestions for supplementing the memorandum of procedure (MoP) for the appointment of judges to the high courts and the Supreme Court.

He said in order to make the Collegium system “more broad-based, transparent, accountable and objective”, the government brought into force the Constitution (Ninety-Ninth Amendment) Act, 2014, and the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, 2014, on April 13, 2015.

However, both Acts were declared unconstitutional on October 16, 2015, by the Supreme Court, which revived the Collegium system.

Amid a standoff between the government and the Supreme Court Collegium over the appointment of judges, a parliamentary panel had recently asked the executive and the judiciary to come up with “out-of-box thinking” to deal with the “perennial problem” of vacancies in high courts.

The committee was “surprised” to note that the Supreme Court and the government have failed to reach a consensus on the revision of the memorandum of procedure for the appointment of judges, though it’s under consideration of both for “about seven years now”. The panel had said it expected the government and the judiciary to finalise the revised MoP, which is more efficient and transparent.

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