RTI activist SC Agrawal had sought information about judges who broke the queue and went to the top and others regarding whom the president had reservations.
The law ministry is an intermediary between the Supreme Court (SC) and the president of India, but it does not know the names of judges whose elevation to SC and the high courts (HCs) the head of state has opposed.
In reply to an RTI query, the ministry also says it doesn’t maintain a record of chief justices of HCs who have been superseded.
RTI activist SC Agrawal had sought information about judges who broke the queue and went to the top and others regarding whom the president had reservations.
Agrawal’s application was sent to the president’s secretariat, which forwarded it to the department of law and justice.
“... You have requested for lists of names of judges whose files were returned by the president’s secretariat in cases of elevation to HC or SC and details of CJs of HCs where representations and submissions were received against their superseding as judges of SC.
“... no such list is maintained by this [law] department,” the ministry’s information officer SK Shrivastava told Agrawal.
In the scheme of appointment, promotion and elevation of HC or SC judges, the president doesn’t have a strong say. S/he can return the SC collegium’s decision once, but cannot overrule it.
This is why the collegium could elevate Allahabad HC chief justice Chandramauli Kumar Prasad to SC, despite the government returning his file after a note by president Pratibha Patil, questioning whether seniority had been overlooked in the selection.
Agrawal had sought complete correspondence between the authorities relating to the appointment of justices HL Dattu, AK Ganguly and RM Lodha, who superseded justices AP Shah, AK Patnaik and VK Gupta.
SC also declined to reveal the number of cases in which it has reserved verdicts. Cmdre (retd) L Batra had sought information regarding such cases for 2007, 2008 and 2009.
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