Flak coincides with delay in decision on Dinakaran.
Karnataka high court chief justice DP Dinakaran, who has been accused of amassing land in defiance of norms in Tamil Nadu, will have to wait till the end of the month (as reported by DNA on Friday), or till next month, to know whether he will be promoted to the Supreme Court (SC).
The five-judge apex court collegium, comprising CJI KG Balakrishnan and justices BN Agarwal, SH Kapadia, Tarun Chatterjee and Altamas Kabir, that met in Delhi on Friday to discuss Dinakaran’s elevation could not reach a conclusion.
A court official said the collegium met for about 40 minutes before the week-long Dussehra break, but “no decision was taken”. He, however, refused to divulge whether Dinakaran was present at the meeting.“I can’t comment on that. It was a collegium meeting.’’
Meanwhile, the “arbitrary” collegium came in for heavy criticism from noted jurist VR Krishna Iyer.
The 84-year-old former SC judge said in an article on Friday, “The collegium is a creature of a judicial precedent. It has no constitutional foundation. It is opposed to what BR Ambedkar laid out in the constituent assembly. The whole process of the collegium is arbitrary. There is no way of correcting its operation, except by a constitutional amendment or assertion of the Franklin Roosevelt type.
“It is a pity parliament has not chosen to amend the constitution or prescribe a constitutional code of conduct for judges to behave themselves other than through the impractical process of impeachment.”
Iyer also sought “a commission for the appointment of judges’’.
Lokayukta probe?
In another development, three senior members of the committee on judicial accountability — Shanti Bhushan, Kamini Jaiswal and Anil B Divan— met law minister Veerappa Moily and sought a thorough probe, possibly by Karnataka lokayukta (ombudsman) justice Santosh Hegde, who enjoys an unimpeachable reputation.
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