Judiciary vs executive | The collegium clash

Should a judge be picked by his peers or should the executive have a say in the matter? A bitter battle has broken out between the Union government and the judiciary over the appointment of judges to the top courts

Union law minister Kiren Rijiju (right) greets new CJI D.Y. Chandrachud after his swearing-in, Nov. 9, 2022; (Photo: Twitter/kirenrijiju)

On December 7, vice-president and Rajya Sabha chairperson Jagdeep Dhankhar, in his maiden speech in the House, launched a scathing attack on the Supreme Court for its 2015 judgment scrapping the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act, 2014. Unanimously passed by both houses of Parliament, the NJAC had sought to overturn the collegium system of judicial appointments. Calling it an instance of “severe compromise of parliamentary sovereignty”, Dhankhar said that there was “no parallel to such a development in democratic history where a duly legitimised constitutional prescription has been judicially undone”.