Justice J Chelameswar stays away, Supreme Court collegium stand-off on

NEW DELHI: The five members of the Supreme Court collegium headed by Chief Justice T S Thakur are unlikely to meet together in the near future, as has been the practice for the last two decades, to recommend names to the President for their appointment as judges of the SC. Justice J Chelameswar has refused to sit with the four senior-most judges of the SC, including the CJI, to

consider names for appointment as judges. SC sources said the CJI had written to Justice Chelameswar seeking his participation in the collegium meeting. However, Justice Chelameswar refused. On September 2, Justice J Chelameswar had told TOI that he had stopped attending collegium meetings as he found its procedure and process "most opaque", and that the "majority gangs up" to shoot down genuine objections against undesirable candidates being chosen to be judges of higher courts. Other judges in the collegium are Justices A R Dave, J S Khehar and Dipak Misra.Justice Chelameswar had said, "I have written a letter informing him that I will not be participating in the collegium's meetings henceforth. The system of selection of judges is not at all transparent. No reason, no opinion is recorded. Just two people decide the names and come back to the meeting and ask for a yes or no. Can a judge of the SC or HC be selected in such a manner?"

With Justices Dave and S K Singh scheduled to retire in November, the vacancy in the apex court will increase to seven. This warranted urgent consideration of names to fill the vacancies. With CJI Thakur scheduled to retire on January 3, 2017, six names were circulated among the collegium members. Those in the zone of consideration are Bombay HC Chief Justice Manjula Chellur, Punjab and Haryana HC CJ Deepak Gupta, Rajasthan HC CJ Navin Sinha, Gujarat HC CJ Subhash Reddy, J&K HC CJ N Paul Vasanthakumar and Uttarakhand HC CJ K M Joseph.

While Justice Chelameswar gave his views on the names in writing, the other members of the collegium are yet to sit together to finalise the names and recommend them for appointment.