Collegium stand may irk Centre

The Supreme Court collegium’s in-principle position that it will stand by its recommendation to elevate Uttarakhand Chief Justice K M Joseph as a judge of the apex court would predictably keep alive the confrontation between the executive and the judiciary. The Central government had sent the recommendation back to the collegium for reconsideration but the only concession the five-judge bench is prepared to make is that it would send some other names of judges it wants appointed additionally to the apex court when it meets again on May 16. Besides the Chief Justice, the other four judges on the collegium are those who had held a media conference to oppose the CJI’s prerogative to constitute benches for cases.

The question still remains whether the collegium system has stood the test of time or whether it needs to be reviewed in the interests of the basic constitutional principle that each of the three key democratic institutions — the executive, the legislature and the judiciary — need to be subject to checks and balances. In the current case, with the collegium system having only representation of judges, it is clear that the judiciary is divorced from that principle. The case of Justice Karnan, who was appointed by the collegium but had to be reined in by the Supreme Court through arrest and detention when he went berserk challenging most of them, is a pointer that the collegium system is not foolproof. By including other names for appointments while reiterating Justice Joseph’s name, the collegium has tried to seem reasonable. How the Modi government will react to the collegium’s reiteration is quite another matter. As things stand, when the recommendation for Justice Joseph is back with the government it has no option but to accept, but it can delay the process.