NEW DELHI:
President Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday cleared the appointment of five high court judges to the Supreme Court, signaling the end of the stalemate triggered by the refusal of a senior judge to participate in the selection process unless it was made transparent.
The fresh appointments will raise the strength of the Supreme Court from 23, to 28 judges, leaving just three vacancies in the top court that has a sanctioned strength of 31 judges.
Of the five to be sworn in as Supreme Court judges on Friday, four are chief justices of high courts: Justice Navin Sinha (Rajasthan) Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul (Madras) and Justice Deepak Gupta (Chhattisgarh) and Justice Mohan M Shantanagoudar (Kerala).
The fifth, Justice S Abdul Nazeer is a judge in the Karnataka high court.
The Supreme Court's collegium - or the group of senior-most judges that decides on judicial appointments - had recommended these names to the government which approved it and sent to the President for clearance.
The selection process was stalled last year when a Supreme Court
Justice J Chelameswar, boycotted meetings of the collegium to push for transparency and accountability in the selection process.
Justice Chelameswar had then told NDTV that the collegium "should record and give reasons for its decisions on selection or rejection of judge". If the Chief Justice of India (Justice TS Thakur) gives an assurance on this, I will attend meetings," he said in September 2016.
The Supreme Court had declared soon after that the concerns raised by the senior judge would be sorted out.
The new
CJI Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar at the helm of affairs, sources said, is understood to have persuaded Justice Chelameswar to attend the meetings and all his concerns have been sorted out.
In 2015, Justice Chelameswar
was the only judge to take a different view when a five-member bench struck down the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act that gave politicians a role in appointing judges.
Backing the law passed by parliament, he was critical of the system of judges appointing judges in which there was "no accountability".
He had referred to cases where the SC collegium, after rejecting a name recommended by the High Court collegium, had "quickly retraced its steps" and leaving scope for speculation on what led to the quick change.