A newspaper article by Justice Markandey Katju, a retired Supreme Court judge who is currently chairman of the Press Council of India, has created something of a sensation by questioning the appointment of a High Court judge around a decade ago, but his so-called disclosure, coming so long after the events in question, appears to serve little purpose in practical terms. If some have begun to attribute motives to Justice Katju, it is not difficult to see why. Indeed, some legal luminaries have openly wondered why the retired Supreme
Court judge had not initiated impeachment proceedings against the judge whose elevation he thought was mala fide since he himself headed the Madras High Court at the time. Whatever the sceptics may suggest, what the article in question does, however, is to reinforce the belief that the sooner we move away from the system of judges appointing judges (the present collegium system) and move in the direction of a Judicial Accountability Commission, the better.
The nub of Justice Katju’s argument is that an incumbent (the reference is to Justice Ashok Kumar, who died in 2009, although the article does not explicitly mention his name) was given extensions as an additional judge in the Madras High Court because he had strong political backing from the DMK (again, the party is not named, but the inference is crystal clear), which threatened to pull down the Manmohan Singh government (as it was a major coalition partner) if the expiring term of the additional judge was not extended.
Justice Katju has said this extension should have been turned down as there were IB strictures against the additional judge. He names three retired Chief Justices of India as extending the term of the additional judge and later confirming him as a High Court judge. Two of the three ex-CJIs have been quoted in the media denying any wrongdoing. However, in 2008, the Supreme Court did take note of the subject when the matter came up. Curiously, it upheld the appointment of Justice Ashok Kumar as a judge of the Madras High Court but criticised Chief Justice of India R.C. Lahoti for earlier extending his term as an additional judge without reference to the collegium.
The present Chief Justice, R.M. Lodha, has refrained from comment. In real terms, this matter is going nowhere. The judge in question against whose elevation Justice Katju has written has been dead five years. The law minister of the day, H.R. Bhardwaj, has gone on record saying that political pressure in judicial appointments is routine, but his government had not succumbed to it. All that is evident is that judges appointing judges, or the government appointing them, are both to be avoided.
