Rainbow of suggestions on collegium creates din in Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: The cacophony created by too many loud voices suggesting reforms in the collegium system forced a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court to comment adversely on the conduct of lawyers who appeared to have no regard for the traditional mode of addressing judges.
The bench headed by Justice J S Khehar said, “You do whatever you want. You want to destroy the court, go ahead and do it. If senior lawyers are not harnessing you (the advocates), we are not going to say anything.“

In the garb of suggesting reforms, most advocates -M Nedumpara, R P Luthra and Virag Gupta being the most vociferous -appeared to have a grievance that the collegium system had promoted nepotism and had favoured family members of judges and senior advocates by selecting them as high court judges. But the range of suggestions reflected the thinking in different social groups within society .

If Madhya Pradesh OBC advocates association through Varun Thakur demanded 51% reservation for OBC in judges' posts, advocate Subba Rao wanted 22% reservation for SCsSTs, and lawyer Sneha Kalita joined the quota chorus by asking the court to consider reservation for women in the Su preme Court and high courts.

Additional solicitor general Pinky Anand and senior advocate Arvind Datar, who have been asked by the court to put together the suggestions, prepared a chart of the views received so far from 62 persons, including Fali S Nariman and leading lawyers, besides the government.

The Union government suggested a three-step procedure for appointment of judges through participatory consultative process and that there should be “an annual report on appointments which should be made public“. “All procedures of the col legium must be recorded in writing and transferred to the National Archives of India after 30 years for use by scholars,“ another suggestion said.