FORMER Supreme Court judge Sanjay Kishan Kaul has criticised former Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud’s approach to judicial appointments, alleging that he was “too deferential to the Government”. In his forthcoming memoir ‘Without Fear or Favour’, Justice Kaul, while recounting a Collegium meeting to fill six Supreme Court vacancies, says five names had been agreed upon in advance when Justice Chandrachud proposed a sixth candidate and considered checking the Government’s view. “The Chief Justice drew me aside into a separate room and wondered aloud whether he should telephone out to check the Government’s view,” Kaul wrote in his book. “There is a difference between consultation and what I came to regard as pre-approval, seeking the Government’s nod before the Collegium had even formally deliberated,” Justice Kaul wrote. Speaking to news portal ‘The Wire’ about his memoir, the former judge said that the Collegium must resist executive pressure to safeguard judicial independence. Justice Kaul said, “There’s a judicial side and there’s the administrative side to achieve justice’s purpose. I wouldn’t be concerned with the judicial side. I believe he (ex-CJI Chandrachud) had both the intellectual depth and the capacity and hard work to do so.

 

But in consultation with the Government and collaboration, I felt that he was more deferential than necessary to carry it forward”. He further said that “on administrative issues, there was just, I think, too much of the discussion with the Government”. Asked whether the then CJI was trying to please the Government or seeking prior approval, Justice Kaul said, “I don’t think it was a question of pleasing the Government, but what had happened was that he had discussed the names with me earlier. “We had agreed on five names, and I thought the Collegium would be quite okay with the other members of the Collegium, and this (sixth) name was propped up at the last minute with me while going to the Collegium meeting. I said that name is not acceptable to me and will not be acceptable.” “And well, he wanted me to collaborate and go ahead with the name. I said even if I do that, the others will not. I believe, and that’s what happened in the meeting. I told him this will not get through because I know the views of the other collegiate members. Maybe he had already taken some kind of an approval for the other names, including the sixth name,” Kaul told senior journalist Karan Thapar. “So this has become, unfortunately, a practice of names being discussed in some kind of a previous discussion with the Government,” he said.