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In his interview, he agreed that the current process of appointing judges isn’t “fair, rational and transparent”.

Chelameswar’s view on the collegiums is well known. In September, 2016, he wrote to the then Chief Justice of India, TS Thakur, expressing his “dissent at the non-transparent manner” in which it was working, but as he says, “nothing much has changed since then”.

Every office in the land, including the Chief Justice’s, has to be “subject to public scrutiny”, he said. In a democracy, he added, “no public office holder is beyond scrutiny.” And the chief justice, he added, has to work consultatively. Even the Prime Minister works consultatively with the cabinet, Chelameswar said.

The buzz in Delhi’s power circles is that the chief justice may pick anyone other than Ranjan Gogoi, the second senior-most judge in the court currently, as his successor because the latter was one of the four judges who held the press conference on January 12. Commenting on the practice of the Chief Justice recommending who his successor should be, Chelameswar said there is “nothing wrong in it”. But if the Chief Justice is not recommending the “name of the next senior-most judge”, he should “have the freedom to do so, provided he records the reasons” for not doing so, Chelameswar added. Chelameswar has decided not to take up “any post-retirement job” and plans to spend time in his ancestral village in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, and Hyderabad.