The arguments for and against the National Judicial Appointments Commission can be said to be over. However flawed a system of appointments by which judges choose judges may be, it is now clear after the October 16 verdict that the judiciary has prevailed in the case for upholding the collegium system over the NJAC. This was bound to happen as the judiciary, as the final arbiter and dispenser of justice, has had a wider acceptance in modern India than even when the writers of the Constitution envisaged checks and balances among the powers of the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary.
In accepting in some way that the collegium, now operating entirely on the Memoranda of Procedure framed after rulings by nine-member benches of the Supreme Court in the 1990s, too needs to reform, the apex court has called for public opinion positing that in a democracy every person has the right to express his opinion. Right-thinking people will support such a move, path-breaking in that it involves the public. It is up to the finest legal minds to recommend ways to bring about a better collegium, with suggestions to improve functioning in four areas — transparency, eligibility criteria, an independent secretariat and a mechanism to deal with complaints — particularly welcome . The people’s will, as reflected in legislation passed in Parliament, may have been overlooked, but a place at least for the voice of the people to be heard has been found. That the judiciary itself has set a time frame for the suggestions to be collated and dealt with is to be welcomed.
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