Economic Times: New Delhi: Saturday,
May 28, 2016.
The Supreme Court
has turned down a new Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) a guideline for selection
of high court judges and returned it to the government, two months after the
Centre prepared it.
Certain
clauses introduced by the government in its draft MoP do not seem to have cut
ice with the Supreme Court collegium. The collegium headed by Chief Justice of
India Tirath Singh Thakur said certain clauses needed rectification.
According to
government sources, the collegium underlined 'undesirability' of certain
clauses which were 'not in harmony' with the tenets of independent functioning
of judiciary. The MoP was received today by the law ministry.
A senior
government official, requesting anonymity, said that the draft MoP would have
to be modified to introduce transparency in the appointment of judges to
superior judiciary. "It is felt that the current draft could not achieve
the core purpose of instilling transparency in the selection process of
judges", the official said.
He added that
the government would closely examine the matter and "iron out the
differences". For the MoP to be implemented, both government and judiciary
have to "agree" on the final draft. After a stand-off between the
Modi government and Supreme Court over the constitution of National Judicial
Appointments Commission (NJAC), a Constitution bench of the Supreme Court had
struck down NJAC last October.
The
government had contended that the current system of selection of judges collegium
system was opaque and that transparency in selection process was imperative.
Setting aside NJAC, a legislation to replace the collegium system the bench
headed by Justice Jagdish Khehar had asked the government to prepare a revised
MoP in consultation with the Chief Justice of India.
Preparing the
draft MoP, the government had decided to keep appointment of top judges out of
purview of the Right to Information Act. Incidentally, the government had
constantly contended before the Supreme Court that the collegium system was
opaque, also asserting that any appointment should be open to scrutiny under
the RTI Act. However, the government had later took the stand that transparency
could be achieved "even without" RTI.
.JPG)
.JPG)
