Union Law Minister Questions SC’s Collegium System; Urges Resurrection Of National Judicial Appointments Commission

Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has expressed strong reservations against the Supreme Court collegium system and the striking down of the government’s proposal to set up a National Judicial Appointments Commission to appoint judges to the higher judiciary.

The statement was made when he spoke at the launch of a book titled ‘Indian Constitution Revisited’, edited by the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Research Centre’s director Mahesh Chandra Sharma and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts chairman Ram Bahadur Rai, recently.

It may be recalled that in 2015, a five-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court had struck down the government’s National Judicial Appointments Commission proposal passed by Parliament as “unconstitutional”, and retained the collegium system by a 4:1 verdict.

However, Prasad said that there is a need to resurrect the National Judicial Appointments Commission proposal.

“The Prime Minster of India can take the right decision in appointing the President, Vice-President, Chief Election Commissioner, Comptroller and Auditor General… He is the chief of all defense mechanisms, he has control over the nuclear button, but he will make the wrong decision in the selection of judges… This is very flawed reasoning given by Supreme Court while striking down National Judicial Appointments Commission, and needs to be changed. We have serious objections to the reasoning given by the Supreme Court,” Prasad stated.

Prasad claimed that the collegium, whereby a panel of senior Supreme Court judges appoints judges to the higher judiciary, is actually not part of the basic structure of the constitution, and that before the system was introduced, judges appointed by previous governments stood firm and delivered the best of judgments.