The CBI informed a bench of Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justice A M Khanwilkar that only 8-10% of the almost 31 lakh NGOs had filed their accounts with Registrar of Societies (RoS) detailing receipt and spending of funds. “You reach in time”, he told the bench pointing out that the high courts were “pretty much delayed” in initiating the process for filling the vacancies which in cases started five years, six years, even seven years after they arose.
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The Centre told the Supreme Court today that there was no logjam over judicial appointments in the country, a cause that is evidently of enormous importance to Chief Justice TS Thakur.
He also submitted to the court in a sealed cover a detailed report from the central government on the status of various appointments that were forwarded to the government by the collegium.
The cloud over judges’ appointment may finally witness the silver lining.
He cited the importance of what he called sittings of the Supreme Court vested with jurisdiction of constitutional interpretation and other appellate jurisdiction hearing appeals from subordinate courts amongst others.
Meanwhile the Attorney General (AG) saying that it is the High Courts which have caused the delay as it is their responsibility to commence the appointment process at least six months before a particular vacancy arises. Once we start the process, there should not be delay or it should be stalled.
At the outset, he said “there is progress in the appointments and have the (hearing of the) matter after two weeks”.
The bench had said that if the government had reservation against any names, then it can always come back to the collegium.
Requesting the bench to go through the documents “very carefully”, he said appointments have been cleared in the high courts of Chhattisgarh, Kerala and Madras.
He said during his recent visit to Chhattisgarh High Court, he found that there were only eight Judges working there and the vacancy was more than one-third.
The court was hearing a PIL filed by Lieutenant Colonel Anil Kabotra, 1971 war veteran, on the issue of huge backlog of cases and vacancies in the judiciary.
A bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and P C Pant issued notices to the Centre and all state governments on the PIL which also seeks a direction to the states to provide adequate budgetary allocation and essential infrastructure for effective functioning of Lokayuktas.
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From the moment Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly in February, Heritage Foundation scholars have been at the forefront of the debate over the Supreme Court vacancy.
