The Brave Pedestrian

“MY LORDS SHOULD WEAR A BURQA and roam in the court corridors to hear the way lawyers talk about the judges of this court. You will get first-hand account of the rotting justice delivery system. The kind of lawyers who are being appointed as judges is a disgrace,” senior advocate Dushyant Dave, arguing for the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), told a Constitution Bench led by Justice J S Khehar. “It is a shame how every court is going an extra mile to protect politicians and film stars, and ordinary citizens are deprived of justice,” he added. Read  http://tinyurl.com/ burqa-judges Image: http://tinyurl.com/SC-Judges-burqa Warm Regards, Krish 9821588114

Judges selected by the collegium for higher judiciary are sometimes worse than useless, according to Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi. Rohatgi gave the instance of Justice Cyriac Joseph. As a judge of Delhi High Court, Justice Joseph performed miserably. He reserved more than 100 judgments and went out on being transferred without delivering the judgments, so that all the cases had to be reheard. Later, as Chief Justice of Uttarakhand High Court, Cyriac Joseph delivered 162 judgments of which 89 "cannot be even called orders as they did not decide rights of the parties. These are merely stating that the petition has become infructuous or allowing the petition to be withdrawn. Of the 162, only two could be called judgments... But both these were authored by the other judge who was part of the bench," the AG said. Justice Cyriac Joseph was very successful at climbing the career ladder. Only one month after being appointed as permanent judge of Kerala High Court in July 19...

It is a lie that Government currently has no say in appointing judges, and therefore Judicial Appointments Commission Act is required for giving government a say. The fact is that government has been continually influencing the appointment of judges by the Collegium from the back door. Recommendations to the collegium are made through the back door by big-ticket lawyers who have access, like Manu Singhvi, Kapil Sibal and Arun Jaitley. These are the mid dlemen or puppet masters who make judicial appointments happen, by trading favours (land allotments, post-retirement appointments etc) with collegium judges. They are king-makers or "judge-makers" who approach the collegium on behalf of government, powerful business lobbies and political parties, to promote their favourite candidates. The Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) will only enable the government to have additional control over judicial appointments -- some extra bargaining leverage to make the collegium judges be...

A tiny “ruling clique” of Supreme Court judges, led by the Chief Justice of India, currently decides which judge is to be elevated to High Courts and Supreme Court, or made Chief Justice of High Courts or Supreme Court. In making these appointments, this clique is guided by career aspirations of, and friendships with, individual judges rather than what is good for the judiciary as a whole. As a result, Chief Justices of high courts are quite often appointed for a couple of mo nths, before being elevated further. This ruling clique is called the “collegium”. There is no mention of the collegium in the Constitution of India. The collegium system, which has been in use since 1993, relies on two of its own judgments, and one opinion, collectively known as the Three Judges Cases. The court evolved the principle of judicial independence to mean that no other branch of the state -- including the legislature and the executive -- would have any say in the appointment of judges. In July...