Centre cannot bypass judiciary, has to appoint remaining judges: Justice (Retd) Fakhruddin

Acknowledging that the tiff between the judiciary and the Centre is becoming apparent after the Supreme Court refused to accept the latter's stand on rejecting 43 names for appointment, former Delhi High Court Judge, Justice (Retired) Fakhruddin on Saturday said the government has no choice but to pay heed and forward the appointments to President Pranab Mukkherjee.

"The legal and constitutional position is, as it stands today, till the new procedures are adopted or passed, the government has to forward the appointments to the president, even after the Centre sent back appointments for the reconsideration and SC reiterated it stand. Now as per the constitutional provision, the government is bound to accept the recommendations and has to appoint them," Fakhruddin told ANI.

Fakhruddin further pointed out that the situation is serious as various positions in high courts are still vacant, thereby affecting the justice delivery system.

"We are already facing with economic emergency (demonetisation), now a third kind of emergency is erupting," he said.

"All the courts have been working from morning till evening. Now the high courts are not functioning because of pending vacancies and making the pendency of the cases too long," he added.

The Supreme Court on Friday refused to accept the government's rejection of 43 names of the 77 it had recommended for judicial appointments in High Courts.

Only 34 names out of the 77 were accepted by the government.

"We have reiterated all the 43 names for the appointment of judges of high courts which were rejected by the government and have been sent back for reconsideration," a bench comprising Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and A.R Dave said.

The Centre had on November 11 informed the apex court that it has returned over half the names recommended to it for appointment as high court judges by the Collegium

Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi had told the top court that the Collegium is yet to respond to the draft Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) that the Centre had submitted to it on August 7 this year.