Government wants to know from Supreme Court if primacy of CJI figures in Constitution

NEW DELHI: In a counter-attack of sorts on the collegium system for appointing superior court judges, the government demanded to know from the Supreme Court if the process had any moorings in the Constitution. The system of checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution didn’t envisage the concept of primacy of the Chief Justice of India in the selection process or even an insulated judiciary, it argued.

Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi’s arguments came on Tuesday during a hearing on petitions challenging the legality of the Narendra Modi government’s twin laws bringing in a National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) to make judicial appointments. A Constitution bench comprising Justices JS Khehar, Jasti Chelameswar, Madan B Lokur, Kurian Joseph and Adarsh Kumar Goel is hearing the petitions.

Rohatgi sought to question a 1993 ruling under which the collegium took charge of appointments to the exclusion of the executive, a change from the earlier system in which the executive had an equal say. Under the collegium system, the executive’s role was limited to carrying out a background check on judges and in the worse-case scenario, sending a name back to the collegium for reconsideration.

But if the collegium reiterated the name, the government had no option but to clear the appointment.