What signalled the end of the collegium proceedings under CJI Lalit, who will retire on November 8, was the Union law minister’s October 7 letter requesting him to name his successor. This along with Chandrachud — in line to become the next CJI considering his seniority — and Nazir’s objection was weighed in by the five-member collegium, which late on Sunday took the decision that “no further steps need be taken and the unfinished work in the meeting called for September 30 is closed without there being any further deliberation”.
The next CJI-led collegium will consider all appointments and transfers after November 9.
On October 9, TOI had reported that as per the 1998 Constitution bench judgement on ‘appointments and transfers of judges’, the collegium resolution had to be supported by a minimum four of the five judges, including the CJI.
The proposal to recommend names of four — three HC chief justices and a senior advocate — had the approval of CJI Lalit and Justices Sanjay K Kaul and K M Joseph.
The scheduled collegium meeting on September 30 could not take place as Chandrachud, along with Justice Hima Kohli, took pains to sit in court till 9.15 pm to finish hearing all matters listed before him, as it was the last day before the court went into a week-long Dussehra break.
Then the CJI decided to seek approval for the four names by circulating the proposal on September 30 evening itself. It was strongly objected to in writing on October 1 by both Justice Chandrachud and Justice S A Nazir, who said that appointments to the highest court and to constitutional posts should not be through circulation but through physical deliberations.
However, as they had not stated any objection to the four names, the CJI wrote again on October 2 seeking reasons for their objections to the names and suggestions for alternative names. “There was no response to the said communication,” the October 9 resolution of the collegium said.
The collegium had cleared the name of Justice Dipankar Datta, CJ of Bombay HC, for appointment as SC judge in its September 26 meeting and sent the recommendation to the government. However, for the other 11 names, the collegium members wanted to evaluate their merits by looking into the judgments delivered by them.
The October 9 resolution, uploaded on Monday in SC website, took credit that CJI Lalit-led collegium in its September 26 meeting had for the first time introduced “the procedure of circulating the judgments of prospective candidates and making an objective assessment of their relative merit”.
The resolution noted that, “Though the procedure of circulating the judgments of the prospective candidates and making an objective assessment of their relative merit was introduced for the first time in the meeting held on September 26 and though the name of Justice Dipankar Dutta was also cleared in that meeting, a demand was raised by some of the members of the collegium that we should have more judgments of the other candidates. Therefore, the meeting was postponed to September 30 and more judgments were circulated.”