Deputy leader of the Congress in the Rajya sabha Anand Sharma on Thursday alleged that the government was blocking the appointment of judges as it was “very angry” after the Supreme Court’s decision i
Deputy leader of the Congress in the Rajya sabha Anand Sharma on Thursday alleged that the government was blocking the appointment of judges as it was “very angry” after the Supreme Court’s decision in the National Judicial Appointments Comm-ission.
“For the last one year, the collegium, the CJI, they have made recommendations to the government, but after the NJAC judgment, the government seems to be very angry and on path of confrontation with the collegium of the Supreme Court,” Mr Sharma said elaborating on the vacancies of judges in higher judiciary. However, the charge was strongly refuted by the Centre.
The Supreme Court of India had in October 2015 declared as unconstitutional the law brought by the government to replace the over two-decade-old collegium system of judges appointing judges in the higher judiciary and quashed the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act. “Therefore, the attempt of this government is to block appointments and force a situation where the memorandum of procedure of appointments (MoP) as proposed by the collegium of Supreme Court is diluted so that people owing allegiance to particular ideology, people having certain leanings, will get accommodated,” Mr Sharma alleged during the Zero Hour in the Rajya Sabha.
He claimed that the situation was so serious that Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur broke down in front of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and “months have passed but the Prime Minister is unmoved”.
“The Prime Minister has not taken any action, nor his government. His government has to address this issue and explain why it is blocking names which have been recommended by the high court and Supreme Court collegiums, and when will these vacancies be filled so that poor people can get justice,” Mr Sharma said.
The senior Congress leader pointed out that over five crore civil and criminal cases are pending in various courts across India. The situation is further exacerbated due to the lack of appointment of judges to the vacant posts in the high courts, he said.
Refuting the charges, former law and justice minister Sadananda Gowda said “The matter raised by Anand Sharma is far away from the truth. After the NJAC verdict, the government itself went to the CJI. I myself went to the CJI. I said that the new MoP will take some time for finalisation. So we said that there is a huge pendency across the country... We said the appointments can be proceeded as per the earlier MoP.”
Mr Gowda, who has now been shifted to the ministry of statistics and programme implementation, said he had himself written a letter to the CJI, and on that basis, the appointments started.
“Last year, 31 new appointments have been made to High Courts. This year from January to April, 51 appointments have been done and 87 ad hoc Judges have been appointed,” he said.
