Centre, Supreme Court fight over judges' appointment

New Delhi: In a scathing attack on the Centre for inordinate delay in processing judicial appointments, the Supreme Court on Friday asked the government ‘not to bring the judiciary to a grinding halt’. “You may now as well close down court rooms and lock justice out. You can have the institution called the judiciary locked” it expressed in anguish.

A three-judge Bench of Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and L. Nageswara Rao refused to accept the submissions of the attorney general Mukul Rohatgi that the government had cleared most of the names recommended by the apex court collegium.

The bench was unhappy that practically nothing happened in the last one month when the AG said 35 and odd of the 88 names were cleared and remaining will be cleared soon.  

An angry CJI told the AG “In Allahabad, out of a sanctioned strength of 165 there are only 77 judges. In Karnataka High Court, an entire floor of courts is locked because there are no judges (as against a total 68 judges with more than half vacant). Once we had a situation where we had judges but no court rooms. But now there are court rooms but no judges.You may now as well close court rooms down and lock justice out. You can have the institution called the judiciary locked”.

When the AG defended the delay saying the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) on judicial appointments has not been put in place, the Chief Justice said “The MoP is your red herring.”