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Ujjal Bhuyan calls for openness in collegium appointments
Supreme Court Justice Ujjal Bhuyan has said greater transparency in the collegium process would strengthen public confidence and ensure merit remains the guiding principle in judicial appointments. The observation has revived a…
Supreme Court Justice Ujjal Bhuyan has said greater transparency in the collegium process would strengthen public confidence and ensure merit remains the guiding principle in judicial appointments. The observation has revived a debate that has lingered for three decades: whether insulation from political interference has become insulation from constitutional accountability.
The collegium, created by judicial interpretation and not by the Constitution, has faced sustained criticism over its opacity. Since November 2024, its resolutions have stopped naming members or giving reasons for elevations, reversing a brief period of disclosure that began in 2017. Former CJI R.M. Lodha previously noted that nearly one in three High Court judges could be relatives of sitting or retired judges, and in 2018 the Union government flagged 11 of 33 Allahabad High Court recommendations on similar grounds.
Comparisons have been drawn with other democracies: the UK advertises vacancies and conducts structured interviews, and South Africa invites public nominations. Within India, the court has held that its own office falls under the Right to Information Act, but that logic has not been extended to how judges are chosen.
Indian Opinion Analysis
The collegium was never envisaged in the Constitution, it was carved out by the Supreme Court through three judges' cases between 1981 and 1998. Each ruling transferred more power from the executive to senior judges, but no corresponding mechanism for public accountability was built. The current system means a handful of judges decide who enters the higher judiciary with no published criteria, no advertised vacancies, and, since late 2024, no disclosed reasoning. A practical test is already visible: the collegium in January 2025 discussed but stopped short of barring relatives of judges from consideration, settling instead for higher scrutiny. That compromise will work only if scrutiny itself is defined and made verifiable, which it is not. The next signal to watch is whether the collegium resumes publishing reasoned resolutions, or whether the debate moves to Parliament, where a judicial appointments commission bill has been introduced before but never passed.
Source: thehindu.com
This brief was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
