SUJATA KOHLI’S PRAYER

with the accused to flout the orders of this court. All we have to say is that the Tihar Jail superintendent and his staff are shameless. Can you imagine it is happening in the capital city? We have lost all faith in the Tihar jail authorities. They are defeating our orders by sitting in the capital city. We will certainly take them to task, but we will first shift the accused from this jail.”

The emphasis of Kohli’s petition is focused, mainly on raising the question, as to why some of the High Courts (all 25) have been sleeping over these numerous vacancies, lying vacant for years, and the question of accountability in the matter. In her petition, Kohli has prayed: A clear and well-defined time-line for sending recommendations for the posts of HC judges from out of the judges of district judiciary, to be mandatorily complied with, by every HC; a clear and well defined criteria for sending recommendations for posts of HC judges from out of the judges of district level, to be mandatorily complied with, by every HC; any deviation by any HC be viewed with concern and an accountability be fixed in the matter; a time-bound procedure to govern the entire process, right from arising of a vacancy, recommendations, clearance of the names or otherwise, and appointments in case of clearance; a direction to Respondent No.2 (Delhi HC) to send the names of the officers of the District Judiciary, who have been in the zone of consideration for long, including that of the Petitioner. The Writ Petition was filed on 27 June 2021 and after scrutiny it was numbered and registered on 29 June 2021. Since it was not in the “category of urgency”, registry refused to entertain urgent mentioning then on 4 August that it was mentioned before Chief Court but the court refused to allow for its urgent listing. As of now, no date of listing is shown in status of the case.

Kohli told The Sunday Guardian that all the Chief Justices of India, including the present one—justice N.V. Ramana— have been constantly showing concern about the unfilled vacancies. It’s like running in the maze of the SC and the HCS’ collegiums and the Union government. Kohli wants to know why it takes so long for the HCS to recommend the names to the SC and for the apex court and the Union Law Ministry to either clear or reject these. Many times, the SC collegium itself rejects many names sent by different HC collegiums.

The government also rejects many or all names sent by the SC collegium for judges’ appointment either in the apex court or in the HCS. This writer is aware of sometimes the government and the SC or HC collegiums in the past agreeing to the appointment of a certain number of names recommended by each side. In the process, many bright ones are not elevated. Kohli is now back to law practice at Dharamshala (Himachal Pradesh) and Delhi. Her passion is for adventure solo drives.

Man Mohan can be contacted at rovingeditor@gmail.com