Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) for appointment of judges had been sent to the judiciary and that any pendency in appointments cannot be laid at the door of the government.
Speaking at the first edition of The Hindu’ s thought conclave The Huddle on Saturday, Mr. Prasad was clear that the government was committed to the independence of the judiciary and that the MoP was “based on the directions given by the judiciary when they ruled on not accepting the National Judicial Appointment Commission (NJAC).”
He said that the judiciary’s fear that the political executive would unduly influence appointments was unfounded. “The collegium system for the appointment of judges only came about in 1993. The allusion that the Prime Minister can be instrumental in the election of the President of India, the Vice-President, the Chief Election Commissioner , the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) but not judges has to be challenged,” he said.
He went a step further to say that the system of appointments that existed before the collegium system had produced judges of the calibre of Justices Krishna Iyer, Hidayatullah, Gajendra Gadkar, Patanjali Shastri. “Can those advocating the collegium system as superior come up with appointments of that calibre?” he asked.
Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Law and Justice and for Information Technology, in conversation with Nidhi Razdan, Executive Editor, NDTV, on Day 2 of The Hindu's first idea conclave, The Huddle 2017, in Bengaluru on February 11, 2017.
He added that former Chief Justice of India, J.S. Thakur’s public expression of his disappointment at the slow rate of appointment of judges was in the past but not really appreciated. “Since 1993, the collegium system has cleared 75-80 appointments, we have in the last year cleared a 120. The then Chief Justice should not have spoken in public, since the CJI and the Law Minister speak nearly every fortnight and things can be discussed privately,” he said.
Answering a question on sections of the proposed MoP on appointments that suggest that “national security concerns” on candidates can be used to disqualify them, Mr. Prasad said that while he would not comment on the specific content of the MoP, “terror” was an issue that needed to be addressed.
“Terror is an important issue in India and if concerns regarding this come up in the consideration of any appointment that needs to be taken into account, but perhaps not mentioned on file,” he added.
While responding to a question posed by The Hindu’ s former Editor-in-Chief N. Ram on the status of the Lokpal Bill, Mr. Prasad said that there were certain details that needed to be looked into with regard to that.
