Justice Chelameswar opts out of collegium meeting

New Delhi, Sep 2 (PTI) Justice J Chelameswar, one of thefive senior most judges of the Supreme Court, did not takepart in Collegium’s meeting yesterday to discuss variousissues including the Memorandum of Procedure(MoP). Justice Chelameswar, who had written a dissenting verdictwith regard to non-transparency in the collegium system ofappointment, has also reportedly shot off a letter to ChiefJustice T S Thakur expressing his inability to take part inthe meeting of the Collegium, which consists of five seniormost judges including the Chief Justice of India, a highly-placed source said. It has come to light that except Justice Chelameswar, allother judges, including Justice Thakur, had assembled for themeeting on Thursday which ultimately got postponed. The apex court judiciary and the government have been atloggerheads on the finalisation of the MoP which will dealwith the procedures to be followed in the appointment ofjudges in High Courts and the Supreme Court. Recently the Supreme Court, while hearing a PIL, had sentout a stern message to the government over non-execution ofthe collegium’s decision to transfer and appoint ChiefJustices and judges in High Courts. It had warned the Centre that the court would nottolerate "logjam in judges’ appointment" and would interveneto "fasten accountability" as the justice delivery system is"collapsing". In his dissenting judgement, which had quashed the NJACAct and the 99th constitutional amendment, Justice Chelameswarhad said that the collegium system of judges’ appointment was"opaque and inaccessible" to the people at large and it needed"transparency". He had said the assumption that "primacy of thejudiciary" in the appointment of judges was a basic feature ofthe Constitution "is empirically flawed." The Supreme Court judge had said that in the last 20years, after the advent of collegium system, a number ofrecommendations made by the collegia of High Courts wererejected by the collegium of the Supreme Court. PTI RKS PKSMNL SJKARC