Chief Justice On How Judges Appointment Process Is Being Made Transparent

Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud has responded to the criticism over the appointment of judges to Supreme Court and High Court, sharing how the process is being made transparent.

The Collegium, which is tasked which the appointments, has prepared a broad platform where it has assessed 50 judges for consideration for elevation to the Supreme Court, he said while delivering the Ram Jethmalani Memorial Lecture.

He turned down claims that the Collegium has no factual data to evaluate the candidates and said there’s a “Centre for Research and Planning”, headed by an officer from the Haryana judicial services.

“We have prepared a broad platform where we have assessed the top 50 judges of the country who would be considered for appointment to the Supreme Court of India. We have data on judgements and the quality of judgements. The idea is to make the process of appointment in the Supreme Court more transparent,” Chief Justice Chandrachud said.

He said the aim is to lay down objective parameters for the selection of judges.

The Supreme Court has also tied up with the National Judicial Data Grid for helping it with real-time tracking of case disposal and pendency, he said.

“This information will help the Court identify the areas of concern to decrease pendency. Institutionalisation requires policy solutions. Due to the lack of data, it has been painfully difficult to devise methods to reduce pendency.

“Now as per NJDG data, there are 62946 pending civil cases and 17555 pending criminal cases. We have had a disposal rate of 95.34 per cent this year. This data will help me prioritise certain categories of matters (such as the oldest pending cases) for their able disposal and would allow us to introspect our performance in terms of disposal throughout the year,” he said.