No meddling in appointing judges in my tenure: Gogoi

Former Chief Justice of India (CJI) and Rajya Sabha MP Ranjan Gogoi said Wednesday, that the Supreme Court Collegium did not face any government interference during his tenure as CJI when appointing judges to high courts and the Supreme Court.

He was speaking at a webinar organized by Confederation of Alumni for National Law Universities on the topic “Ensuring an independent judiciary under our Constitution”.

“14 names were recommended to Supreme Court during my tenure. They were accepted and appointments made on time. There was never any difficulty. All recommendations with chief justices of HCS also were processed in time. (There was) no executive interference”, he said in his keynote address.

He also said the Collegium system is an excellent method for appointing judges and it also helps keep in check executive interference in judicial appointments.

“My experience with the collegium is that it is a sure way of keeping the executive out of the appointment process. The executive has got an equal role though judicial voice is the ultimate voice”, he said.

He was also critical of a “group” of activists and media who, he alleged, have set benchmarks for judges to be considered independent. Judges are attacked if they do not confirm to their standards and such tendencies will sound the death knell for an independent judiciary, he said.

He created quite a furore when he accepted Rajya Sabha nomination a mere four months into his retirement from the top court.

On post-retirement jobs, Gogoi in response to an audience question, said there are judges who take to arbitration after retirement while some talk about judicial independence and freedom of speech after demitting office.

“You talk about post-retirement engagements as compromising judicial independence. What about those?”

The state will request the Centre to exclude 15% of the area proposed as eco-sensitive area (ESA) in the Western Ghats, in Maharashtra, to allow mining and industrial activity.

The proposal will be made on Thursday during a meeting with the Union environment ministry, which is expected to decide on the matter at the same meeting. On Monday, during a meeting chaired by state forest minister Sanjay Rathore with senior forest officials, it was decided the state would request the Union environment ministry to exclude 15%, or 17 villages, from the final ESA notification, said Jeet Singh, additional principal chief conservator of forest, Maharashtra forest department. “This was proposed based on suggestions received from the state’s industries department and mining bodies as the draft ESA extends into some villages falling within mining and Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) areas,” said Singh.

On October 3, 2019, the Union environment ministry had proposed a draft of ESA in the Western Ghats — 56,825 square kilometres (sqkm) spanning six states and covering 37% of the Western Ghats — of which 17,340 sqkm (2,133 villages) were in Maharashtra. So far, the state forest department has excluded 358 of the 2,133 villages from ESA.

Declaring an area ESA means projects such as mining, quarrying, thermal power plants, industrial units and construction may not be carried out there.

Ecologist Madhav Gadgil, who headed the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel formed in 2010, said, “There is a much larger area that needs to be protected comprising origins of rivers and major water courses. We are witnessing an era of complete destruction of nature to fill the pockets of a small number of people.”