Judiciary and Its Collegium System

Alok Prasanna Kumar writes:

The current back and forth between the union government and the judiciary over judicial appointments is welcome. For too long, the union government ran roughshod over the appointments process with little to no protest from the collegium or the rest of the judiciary. It “segregated” nominees for appointment, returned reiterated nominees, or simply refused to make appointments until nominees quit on their own out of frustration. All of this was quite contrary to the Memorandum of Procedure set out consequent to the Third Judges’ case. More than the union government’s intransigence on the matter, it was the collegium’s acquiescence that was worrying. Successive chief justices even as the union government subverted the collegium process, turning it into a “search and selection committee” style system.