Editor,
The Supreme Court Collegium system reveals a stark and systemic paradox at the very heart of the higher judiciary, detailing an institution that fiercely demands judicial review to check executive excess while completely insulating its own selection process from that very same scrutiny. This insulation is anchored in the controversial stance that judicial appointments are entirely exempt from judicial review and that no individual possesses a legal right to be elevated to a constitutional court. Historically, this insular framework is exposed not as a constitutional mandate, but as a self-crafted judicial creation birthed from the Second Judges Case (1993). This seismic shift was fiercely contested from its inception; notable dissenting jurists like Justices AM Ahmadi and MM Punchhi warned that the Court should never read into the Constitution what it simply did not contain, asserting that structural overhauls belong exclusively to constitutional amendments rather than judicial interpretation. The sheer audacity of this judicial overreach even led renowned constitutional scholar HM Seervai to scathingly denounce the pivotal judgment as “a low point of judicial competence.”
Beyond its questionable legal origin, the operational realities of this system are marred by a severe deficit of accountability, resulting in highly questionable appointments and sudden omissions. Operating strictly behind closed doors, the mechanism functions with zero publicly articulated criteria for choosing or rejecting candidates. This profound secrecy actively fuels heavy allegations of arbitrariness, favouritism, and nepotism, while systematically failing to guarantee balanced regional and community representation. Furthermore, the judiciary’s brief, post-2017 experiment with transparency was short-lived; by 2019, the practice of providing detailed reasoning degenerated into bare, nondescript announcements. Today, the public is treated only to final lists of selected names, while internal dissenting opinions remain aggressively concealed. By aggressively striking down legislative counter-measures like the 2014 National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC)—which sought to introduce a democratic balance to the process—the system has entrenched a heavily criticized reality of judges appointing judges, perpetuating a flawed, opaque framework that remains too insulated from democratic accountability to remain unchallenged.
Ranjit Bose
Bivar Road
Shillong – 1
