POLITICS TAKING A TOLL OF JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS

It is unfortunate that politics has reared its head again in the appointment of a Supreme Court judge despite such a serious shortage of judges in the apex court, high courts and lower courts leading to inordinately delayed justice. The bone of contention this time is the judicial collegium’s recommendation to elevate the chief justice of the Uttarakhand high court, Justice K M Joseph, to the apex court and the Central government’s action in sending back the proposal for reconsideration. Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s citing of three reasons for not elevating Justice Joseph — that there are more senior deserving judges, that Kerala is already adequately represented (the judge is a Keralite) and the need to have representation from the scheduled castes and tribes — have been countered by the Congress’ holier-than-thou attitude of crying ‘wolf ’ when that party’s own record has been far from clean in the past on appointment of judges when it was in power. While the collegium system of the judiciary arrogating to itself the sole authority to appoint judges has proved sorely misplaced, there is so much bad blood and acrimony between the two pillars of democracy that the issue is defying solution.

Former Union Minister and leading lawyer Kapil Sibal of the Congress is perpetually crossing words with the Narendra Modi government with the result that there is an atmosphere of animosity fuelled between the executive and the judiciary which is doing a great dis-service to the cause of the rule of law. In a show of exaggerated outrage over the Centre’s returning of the recommendation, Sibal has raised the warcry that “the judiciary is in danger.” Clearly, while the reasons cited by the Government in Justice Joseph’s case are of debatable merit, the Congress is tarred by the fact that during the Emergency in the 1970s the party had engineered the supersession of three judges in foisting a judge with dubious credentials as the chief justice of India. Justice Joseph’s quashing of President’s rule in Uttarakhand in April 2016 had led to restoration of a Congress government which had angered the BJP. While the Congress says the BJP is punishing Justice Joseph for that act, the BJP points out that the said judge is ranked 42nd in terms of seniority among high court judges and that there are 11 high court chief justices who are senior to him. At least this is a weighty argument. It is indeed high time that the issue be resolved amicably so that steps are taken to fill vacancies of judges across all levels of the judiciary and steps are taken on a war footing to clear the huge backlog of cases.