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However, the bench declared on Thursday that the government could appoint the Lokpal right away without waiting for the law to change. “The Act, as it stands today, is an eminently workable piece of legislation and there is no justification to keep the enforcement of the Act under suspension till theamendments,asproposed,arecarried out,” it said.

Reacting to the court’s ruling, Congress leader in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge told The Indian Express thatthegovernmentcouldhave issued an ordinance if it wanted the Lokpal to become functional. He expressedconcernthatafterthescruling, the government could appoint anyone, without consulting the Opposition.

Thecourtalsoheldthattherewasno “legal disability” for the selection committee — without the Leader of Opposition—toconstituteasearchcommittee to prepare a panel of persons for consideration for appointment as the chairpersonandmembersofthelokpal.

“...absence of such a provision (in the Act), by itself, will not invalidate the constitution of the search committee by the truncated selection committee when the Act specifically ‘empowers’ a truncated selection committee to make recommendations for appointment of the chairperson or members of the Lokpal. To hold otherwise would be self-contradictory,” said the bench.

The bench also held that there was no “constitutional infirmity” in the Lokpal Act if it had not given primacy to the opinion of the Chief Justice of India as a member of the selection committee. “It is not the mandate of the Constitutionthatinallmattersconcerningtheappointmenttovariousofficesin different bodies, primacy must be accorded to the opinion of the CJI or his nominee,”saidthebenchasitdismissed a petition that questioned the validity of a provision in the Act in this regard.

About a recommendation by a parliamentary standing committee in 2015 to replace the Leader of Opposition with the “Leader of largest Opposition Party”, the court said this was “merely an opinion” which has to be first considered by the Executive, and then approved by the Legislature. “The said opinion... would therefore not be sacrosanct. The same, in any case, does not have any material bearing on the validity of the existing provisions of the Act,” it said.

The court said that various other recommendations of the committee were aimed at streamlining the operation of the Act. “Such attempts cannot halt the operation and execution of the law, which the Executive in its wisdom has already given effect to and has brought into force by resorting to the provisions of Section 1(4) of the Act,” it held.