At a time when there is much noise over governance deficit in the country, the no-nonsense approach adopted by Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia in appointment of the Supreme Court judges to overcome the problem of a virtual mass retirement during the past three months has shown how system of governance could be improved without creating any controversy.
As many as seven Supreme Court judges retired between July 7 and October 15 but the vacancies were filled almost immediately with the swearing-in of five judges between September 13 and October 10 and two more judges likely to join soon. The Supreme Court in its history had not seen retirement of so many judges in a single year that too in the span of just three months.
But the “mass retirement” bringing the strength of judges down to 22 from 29 was not allowed to affect the judicial work of the apex court due to prompt appointment of five judges as the 13 courts continued to function as before without any hindrance.
The most encouraging part of the whole exercise was that not a single appointment was questioned by the government unlike what had become a regular feature during the tenure of some of Justice Kapadia’s predecessors in recent times with files on judges’ appointment proposals often found shuttling between CJI’s office and the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
During past five years prior to Justice Kapadia taking over as the CJI, many proposals for appointment of Supreme Court judges had landed in serious controversies with both former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and his successor Pratibha Patil returning many proposal to the Supreme Court collegium for reconsideration after the representations to the President by fellow judges on superseding them or by bar associations questioning the propriety of certain appointments approved by the collegium.
The proposal to elevate Justice P.D. Dinakaran from Karnataka high court Chief Justice to the top court during the tenure of former CJI K.G. Balakrishnan in fact had “exploded” into a major corruption case in Indian judiciary only during the exchange of the file on his appointment between the collegium and Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Justice Dinakaran case later became a major scandal with Rajya Sabha initiating the impeachment proceedings against him and forcing him to quit before he could face Parliament.
But this time neither any complaint, nor any report about government disagreeing on any of the five appointments — Justices S.J. Mukhopadhyay, Ranjana P. Desai, J.S. Khehar, Dipak Misra and Jasti Chelameswar — sent by the collegium to fill the vacancies created due to the retirement of the seven judges have come to light so far.
In fact leaders of the Supreme Court Bar Association and other prominent bodies of lawyers, including Bar Association of India have appreciated the efforts of CJI Kapadia to make the appointment process smooth and non-controversial unlike in the recent past.