Sakina Tashrifwala
Published on: October 6, 2022 at 19:54 IST
After months of putting on a unified front that saw numerous firsts in judicial appointments to the constitutional courts, a disagreement has arisen within the influential Supreme Court collegium regarding the proper procedure to recommend four names, one of whom is a senior advocate, to the apex court Bench.
The division among the collegium occurs just before the Union Law Minister’s letter asking the current Chief Justice of India, Justice U.U. Lalit, to suggest a candidate for his successor is about to be delivered.
The letter from the Law Minister officially begins the selection process for the 50th Chief Justice.
According to the Memorandum of Procedure for Appointment of Supreme Court Judges, the procedure begins with the Union Law Minister soliciting the outgoing CJI’s proposal on the next appointment.
The Minister must seek the CJI’s advice “at the right time.” The Memorandum does not go into detail or provide a timetable.
Typically, the Law Minister delivers his request, and the outgoing Chief Justice offers his proposal with a month to spare before retiring.
Chief Justice Lalit will retire on November 8th. This suggests that the letter from the Minister might arrive before or on October 8.
According to the seniority system, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, who is number two on the Supreme Court, is the next in line to become Chief Justice.
A collegium meeting scheduled on September 30 to debate and finalise the four candidates could not take place since Justice Chandrachud’s Bench was in court till 9.10 p.m. owing to a heavy docket of cases.
The court was in recess beginning the next day, October 1, a Saturday, for the Dussehra festivities.
The court would reopen on October 10, two days after the one-month milestone, on October 8. Normally, when the selection process for his replacement is underway, the outgoing CJI does not offer suggestions for judicial appointments.
Chief Justice Lalit has only about 15 working days remaining until the November 8 break.
His last day of work would be November 7th.
Diwali celebrations will also take place between October 24 and October 29.
As a result, the September 30 meeting of the court’s five senior-most justices — the CJI, Justices Chandrachud, SK Kaul, S. Abdul Nazeer, and KM Joseph — might have been critical in deliberating the four choices.
Due to a lack of time before his retirement and the fact that the court already has five vacancies, Chief Justice Lalit may have proposed to his collegium colleagues that the four proposals be cleared through circulation.
Two of the collegium judges, however, have objected to the proposal of the four names via circulation.
They have stated that the names should be debated in person by the collegium members. The impasse has left the destiny of the four names in doubt.
The Lalit Collegium had previously nominated Bombay High Court Chief Justice Dipankar Datta for a seat on the Supreme Court.
If Justice Datta and the four names are recommended and appointed, the Supreme Court would be back to its full sanctioned strength till Justice Hemant Gupta retires on October 16.