The decision to restore the system was taken at the meeting of the collegium under Chief Justice of India Dipak Mishra
Over seven months after the Supreme Court collegium junked the system of evaluating the performance of Additional Judges of the high courts through a detailed scrutiny of their judgments, the Supreme Court collegium yesterday restored the system.
The decision to restore the system was taken at the meeting of the collegium under Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Mishra. The collegium has also decided that judgments of Additional Judges of the High Courts would be evaluated by a committee of two Judges of the Supreme Court to be nominated by the CJI.
These two Judges would not be the consultee-Judges – which refers to Judges who have served in the high court to which the additional judge, whose case for making permanent is under consideration, belongs.
The guideline was the main criteria to decide whether an Additional Judge should be made a Permanent Judge and was issued by the then CJI SH Kapadia on October 30, 2010.
As first reported by DNA, the decision of the collegium, then headed by previous CJI JS Khehar, taken at a meeting on March 3, 2017, had, however, not found favour with the Centre.
The Union Law Ministry took strong exception to the new practice of the collegium recommending names of additional judges of various high courts for confirmation as permanent judges without making an objective assessment of the judicial work of the judge.
This newspaper had also reported that the government had told the SC collegiums that since the guideline that made it mandatory for a Judgments Evaluation Committee to evaluate the performance of an additional judge before recommending his/her name for appointment as permanent judge was the only "parameter" to examine the performance of the judge, it did not agree with the decision to scrap it.
In his letter to the HC CJs on March 29, then CJI Khehar had written, "The collegium comprising myself and four senior-most judges of the Supreme Court in its meeting held on 3rd March, 2017 has resolved that assessment/evaluation of judgements of Additional Judges of High Court for purpose of determining their suitability for confirmation as Permanent Judges runs contrary to Para 41 of the Judgment of the Supreme Court in SP Gupta case (1981 Supp. SCC 87) and, therefore, the practice of Judges' Committee by the chief justices of the high courts for the said purpose needs to be discontinued."
He had also written to Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on April 16, requesting him to consider the possibility of issuing "necessary instructions to the concerned department to take note of the contents" of his communication to the chief justices while "processing the proposals for appointment of Additional Judges of the high court as Permanent Judges".
GOVT OBJECTION
- DNA had reported Centre’s objection to the practice of the collegium recommending names without making an objective assessment of the judicial work of judges
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