The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Centre to come out with a tabulated chart detailing the number of judges' appointments and transfers reiterated by the collegium that the government had not yet cleared.
The chart must explain why the reiterated recommendations are pending and at which level of government, the bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said in an order.
"The collegium is not a (mere) search committee," Justice Chandrachud said orally to attorney-general R. Venkataramani.
At another point, he said: "The whole idea is not to unearth skeletons in the cupboards but to move forward. The business of governance must proceed."
A dispute has been simmering for years between the judiciary and the executive over judges' appointments, capped by the apex court’s quashing in 2015 of a law giving the government a bigger say in the matter.
With a miffed government chronically sitting on recommendations from the Supreme Court collegium – the sole authority for appointing and transferring apex court and high court judges -- various CJIs have censured the Centre, even threatening to settle the issue "on the judicial side".
Under a memorandum of procedure, the government must carry out any recommendation that the collegium reiterates.
On Friday, the bench was dealing with a batch of petitions and applications, the latest of them moved by the Jharkhand government over the Centre’s failure to clear Justice M.S. Ramachandra Rao’s appointment as chief justice of the state high court, recommended on July 11.
As senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the Jharkhand government, raised the issue, Justice Chandrachud orally observed that the bench expected some of the pending appointments "to come shortly".
As Sibal pressed on, the bench said: "Let us wait for a week, the AG is here today…."
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for another petitioner, underlined the government's failure to clear senior advocate Saurabh Kirpal’s elevation to Delhi High Court, reiterated by the collegium in January 2023. He said many other appointments were pending, some from even earlier.
Venkataramani had at the previous hearing said some judges had not been cleared for the posts of high court chief justices because of "sensitive information" received by the Centre. He had not elaborated.
On Friday, he said: "There are several reasons why such names are pending and we have no hesitation. It is very easy to come to court and say all of this for the other side (petitioners)…. Let’s not make it overly sensitive."
As Sibal and Venkataramani argued, the CJI cut them short and sought the tabulated chart.
On July 11, the collegium of the CJI and the four other senior-most judges --- Justices Sanjiv Khanna, B.R. Gavai, Surya Kant and Hrishikesh Roy -- had recommended eight judges for elevation as chief justices of eight high courts. But the Centre is yet to clear the appointments.
Last year, the apex court had told the Centre to discard its "pick-and-choose method" of clearing judges’ appointments as it was affecting seniority among judges.
