Union law minister refuses to make any comments on Gopal Subramaniam

Union Law Minister Ravishankar Prasad refused to make any comment over former Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam airing his concern over institutional mechanisms being used to tarnish his name.

"As far as Gopal Subramanian's public comment is concerned we have no comments to offer. The appointment of Supreme Court judges is a sensitive process and it will not be approprate and desirable for me to comment and neither do I wish to," Prasad said.

On Congress' accusation over Government's reported move to withold Subramaniam's name as Supreme Court judge, the union minister responded saying, " I want to gently remind that about forty years ago emergency was imposed, how were judges superseded and what kind of havoc was created with the institution judiciary is too well-known.

Subramaniam has said that "there appears to be a certain misgivings about me and it's alright I respect criticism but it should be communicated correctly to the collegium. Ultimately I realised that they were four judges in the list and three were cleared and one was not cleared."

"I felt that I had a duty to myself because nobody defended me till then, there was no suggestion from anyone to the government to put on hold this kind of nonsensical goings on. And I thought at the end of it, I had to take a call, I do not like these kind of iterations. What is important in this matter is that we cannot have adventures of this kind in the matter of judicial appointments. I felt office of the judge was being compromised and therefore if there is such trust deficit, I respect the reservation but this was not correct," he added.

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It is being learnt reportedly that the government has sent a note to the collegium giving out reasons for its reservations over appointing Subramanium to the apex court.

The government had earlier cleared the names of Calcutta high court Chief Justice Arun Mishra, Orissa high court Chief Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel and senior advocate Rohinton Nariman for elevation to the Supreme Court.