Even as Supreme Court faces the prospect of six of its judges retiring this year, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud has roped in the top court's Centre for Research and Planning to bring objectivity to the process of judicial appointments.
Speaking at an event organised by the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) recently, CJI Chandrachud stated that the Center for Research and Planning (CRP) will assist the Permanent Secretariat, which deals with judicial appointments.
"The CRP has some extraordinarily talented young people including young judicial officers who I've recruited. It is headed by an officer from the Punjab and Haryana High Court, a young dalit student who was my former law clerk who has come back now from Jindal Global University after doing a course at Harvard Law School," the CJI said on the composition of the CRP.
The CJI revealed that the CRP has been directed to collect data of the top 50 judges in the country for selection as future Supreme Court judges. Six apex court judges are due to retire this year.
"This was never done, so we now have in place data pertaining to the top 50 judges in order of seniority. So we have their judgments before us, we have the number of reportable judgments which they have delivered. The idea is to promote a sense of objectivity in the work which the Collegium does. So the CRP will now merge so to speak its activities with the permanent Secretariat of the Chief Justice of India," said the CJI.
CJI Chandrachud further said that as part of the Collegium, his emphasis has been on promoting transparency.
"As you all know, we put up reasons for the resolutions which we pass, whether it is in terms of appointment of judges of the High Court or whether it is in terms of appointment of Chief justices transfers of judges."
He added that there is absolutely no justification or reason for the Collegium to keep even a single vacancy unfilled in the Supreme Court, and that it would be his "mission for the future" to ensure this.
"One of my missions has been to ensure that full-strength Supreme Court is not an aberration but a regular feature of the Supreme Court. There is absolutely no justification or reason for the Collegium to keep even a single vacancy unfilled in the Supreme Court and that will be my mission for the future as well," he underlined.
During his speech, he shared that all apex court judges today have been appointed between 2006 and 2011 as judges of the High Courts, and that the sum total of their cumulative experience as judges works to about 121 years.
"121 years, 13 states, one of the union territories. So this gives you an idea of the diversity and the depth of the experience which our colleagues bring to the bench," said the CJI.
On the need to stress upon these aspects, he said,
"Very often, we are criticized as the Collegium and as the institution in regard to the source from which we make judicial appointments. We are criticized on the ground that we are not diverse enough, we are not democratic enough. I ask myself a simple question: what other tribute to diversity can you have than my eight colleagues who are present today on the dias?"
CJI Chandrachud was speaking at the felicitation function of Justices Dipankar Datta, Pankaj Mithal, Sanjay Karol, Sanjay Kumar, Ahsanuddin Amanullah, Manoj Mishra, Rajesh Bindal and Aravind Kumar.