There was no proposal to reintroduce a modified NJAC, says Centre

The Centre further said that out of the 34 judge strength of the Supreme Court, 27 judges are working in the, which puts the vacancy to 7

The Central government on Thursday said there was no proposal to reintroduce a modified National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC).

This was in reply to the question in the Rajya Sabha on judicial appointments.

The Centre said that as of now there was a proposal for appointing Supreme Court judges and eight for High Court judges, recommended by the Supreme Court collegium.

The Centre further said of the 34-judge strength of the Supreme Court, 27 were there.

Similarly in High Courts, in the sanctioned strength of 1,108, 778 judges are working, which means 330 vacancies.

This came on the day the Supreme Court told Attorney General R Venkataramani to “advise” Union ministers to exercise some control over their public criticism of the collegium.

The Supreme Court said the statements made recently were “not being taken very well”.

The court also told the Central government the collegium system was the “law of the land”, which should be followed, and the argument by the Centre that some people in the judicial fraternity were against it “holds no water”.

“Just because there are some sections of the society who express a view against the Collegium system, it will not cease to be the law of the land,” the court said.

A Bench led by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul said the Constitution Bench judgments (“three judges” case) that laid down the collegium system for judges’ appointments must be followed.

The court told Venkataramani that if all in society followed their own law, there would be a breakdown.

The attorney general argued before the court there were two instances of the Supreme Court collegium dropping the names sent back by the Centre and this gave grounds to question the appointments. However, the Centre replied to this saying this did not give the government the licence to ignore the Constitution Bench judgment, which said that collegium reiterations were binding.

The Bench, which comprised Justice Abhay S Oka and Justice Vikram Nath, apart from Justice Kaul, noted it was not aware under what circumstances the collegium earlier dropped the two reiterated names.

The hearing was going on in a contempt petition filed by the Advocates Association of Bangalore against the Centre for not adhering to the time limit for judicial appointments.

A PIL (public interest litigation) petition on the same lines was also filed by the NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation in 2018, which was listed with the other on Thursday.

The attorney general said he had discussions with the ministry after a similar concern was raised by the court and sought more time to discuss the matter.

“Attorney, you will have to do a little better. How do we sort out these issues? There is some kind of an infinite battle,” Justice Kaul said.

The Bench also noted the Centre recently sent back 19 names, including 10 names reiterated by the collegium.

The Bench expressed its disapproval of the status report filed by the attorney general that the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) for the appointment of judges needed reconsideration.