THE COLLEGIUM CLASH

Should a judge be picked by his peers or should the executive have a say in the matter? A bitter battle has broken out between the Union government and the judiciary over the appointment of judges to the top courts

- Kaushik Deka

On December 7, vice-president and Rajya Sabha chairperson Jagdeep Dhankhar, in his maiden speech in the House, launched a scathing attack on the Supreme Court for its 2015 judgment scrapping the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act, 2014. Unanimously passed by both houses of Parliament, the NJAC had sought to overturn the collegium system of judicial appointments. Calling it an instance of “severe compromise of parliamentary sovereignty”, Dhankhar said that there was “no parallel to such a development in democratic history where a duly legitimised constitutional prescription has been judicially undone”.

With this, Dhankhar became the latest to join the ongoing debate between the executive and the judiciary over the appointment of judges to the higher courts. The vice-president almost echoed Union law minister Kiren Rijiju, who has repeatedly questioned the collegium system, saying that “nowhere in the world except in India do judges appoint judges”.