Collegium not a search panel: Supreme Court pulls up Centre on judges' selection

As per convention, the government is obliged to accept the collegium's recommendation for appointment of judges if the decision has been reiterated.

In Short

• Surpeme Court asks Centre to submit list of reiterated judge candidates
• Says government must accept reiterated collegium recommendations
• Chief Justice of India seeks chart on pending reiterated names

Saying that the collegium was not a "search committee", the Supreme Court on Friday asked the government to submit a list of candidates whose names were reiterated by the collegium for appointment as judges at high courts but were not cleared yet.

As per convention, the government is obliged to accept the collegium's recommendation for appointment of judges if the decision has been reiterated. The collegium consists of the five senior-most Supreme Court judges, including the Chief Justice of India.

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud said, "The government has to specify what is the difficulty in as far as reiterated names are concerned. Give us a chart, to what extent reiterated names have been processed."

At this juncture, advocate Prashant Bhushan told the bench that a time limit could be fixed to decide on reiterated names.

"There should be a rule that if they do not approve the recommendations till a particular period, it will be deemed to have been accepted," Bhushan said.

The CJI then asked Attorney General R Venkatramani for a list of reiterated names pending with the Centre.

"Give us a chart of the status and tell us what is the difficulty. See, a collegium is not a search committee. If it merely had the status of a search committee, you had discretion. The idea is not to unearth skeletons in the cupboard, but to move forward," the CJI said.

The Supreme Court was hearing a plea filed by advocate Harsh Vibhore Singhal, seeking a fixed time limit for the Centre to notify the appointment of judges recommended by the collegium.

Separately, a plea was also filed by the Jharkhand government seeking contempt of court action against the Centre for not clearing the recommendation made by the Collegium to appoint Justice MS Ramachandra Rao as the Chief Justice of the High Court.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Jharkhand, said, "The collegium had recommended the appointment of Dr Justice BR Sarangi, a judge of the Orissa High Court, as the Chief Justice of Jharkhand very early, but the Centre cleared it just 15 days before Sarangi's retirement. This is so wrong."

Attorney General R Venkatramani, however, expressed doubts about the extent to which the court could intervene in this matter.

Reacting to it, the CJI said, "You tell us the reasons why those appointments are not being done."

The Supreme Court collegium had earlier this week passed a new resolution on the appointment of Chief Justices of the High Courts. The collegium has made changes to its earlier recommendations regarding Justice Suresh Kumar Kait (Delhi High Court), Justice GS Sandhawalia (Punjab and Haryana High Court) and Justice Tashi Rabstan (Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court).