© Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com
Article 124 (3) (c) of the Indian Constitution the provision that reads. ‘A person shall not be qualified for appointment as a Judge of the Supreme Court unless he is a citizen of India and is, in the opinion of the President, a distinguished jurist.’ But the problem arises, or what can be said to be the failure of the collegium is that since its existence, the Apex Court has not seen a single jurist to have been appointed as a judge in the Apex Court. A jurist as described is one who has a thorough knowledge of the law. The question that arises is that does the collegium, or even for that matter of fact the Chief Justice of India failed to discover a single eminent jurist in this country that resides 1.33 billion people.
Many pioneers in the field of legal education, much like Professor Upendra Baxi, Professor Tahir Mehmood have not been allowed to serve at the Supreme Court and there is a failure in answering why. The most discussed reasons by academicians as to why such appointments don’t take place even after so many years of the establishment of the Supreme Court are
a) Failure to bring diversity in the collegium
b) The Bar Council of India’s rules read along with the Advocate’s Act, 1961
While talking about the first reason, it is a known fact that the collegium’s system is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution or any other written document, which questions as to why the eminent personalities at the court fail to diversify and find ways for such distinguished jurists as to help in the working of the court, also not to forget that this same system went on to provide us a main topic of discussion, the problems associated with the ‘Master of the Roster’ system.
A lot of people interpret the rules provided by the Bar Council of India, which says that A person who is only a visiting faculty at an educational institution can enroll himself with the Bar, also a lot of people get on discussions as to What has been given in the Advocates Act, 1961 that says, an Advocate can be a visiting faculty and teach for a time limit of 3 hours daily.
There has been a continuous ignorance of the jurist-provision under the constitution, which shows how much of a deeply rooted problem this is and one must also understand that this is just one of the silenced provisions of the constitution.
Has the time come, for the people responsible to take such decisions to be held responsible for not being responsible enough or will this just be as ignored as a provision that exists in our Indian Constitution?
Thought provoking indeed!
The last 3 lines caught me off guard 👏👏