The lok Sabha on Friday witnessed MPs cutting across political lines bashing judiciary for ‘lack of transparency” in Collegium system and demanding more accountability. The displeasure against judiciary came up during the debate on the High Court and the Supreme Court Judges (Salaries and Conditions of Service) Amendment Bill on Friday.
The Bill intends to remove anomalies in pension benefits of High Court judges elevated from the bar. Parliamentarians’ contentions came against the backdrop of the apex court ruling in October invalidating the 99th Constitutional Amendment and National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act unanimously passed by both Houses of Parliament.
Initiating the debate on the Bill, SP Muddahanumegowda (Congress) urged the Government to bring a Judicial Accountability Bill. He said the “people have every right to see that judges are accountable to them,” just as Parliamentarians are always asked to be accountable to the people. Citing a huge backlog of cases in courts, he said over 371 posts of High Court judges out of 1,071 sanctioned posts across the country were vacant. Kalyan Banerjee (TMC) criticised the Collegium system through which the judiciary appoints judges to the High Courts and the Supreme Court.
“Collegium system has failed,” he said, adding that whoever the judges like in the Collegium are called “good-good and the others are bad-bad”. He cited the case of former Gujarat High Court Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya who was not appointed a Supreme Court judge and said good lawyers did not want to join as High Court judges due to the Collegium system.
Banerjee, however, opposed some provisions in the Bill, while focusing his attack on judiciary. The TMC member criticised the proposal to include 10 years of practice as qualifying service for the lawyers to be elevated as High Court judges so that they could qualify for pension.
Satyapal Singh (BJP) spoke on similar lines and demanded judicial accountability. “If anybody enjoys complete freedom, it is the judges, however wrong their decisions may be,” he said. Referring to the Supreme Court’s decision to hear on Yakub Memon’s mercy plea late at night, he said terrorist like Memon had such a hearing but poor people do not get such opportunity.
BJP, TMC and Congress members supported the Bill, but the discussion remained inconclusive. Muddahanumegowda said salaries of judges were “meagre” and it should be revised more frequently.
The Bill, among other things, seeks to simplify some of the provisions relating to determination of leave allowances of judges of High Courts and the Apex Court. Introduced by law Minister D. V. Sadananda Gowda, it says the practice of 10 years as advocate will be added as qualifying service for High Court judges elevated from the bar, as ordered by the Supreme Court in a judgment in March last year. The measure seeks to give effect to this judgement.