BeyondHeadlines News Desk
In response to the ex-Chief Justice of India (CJI) R M Lodha strongly defending the Collegium system, IPS officer Amitabh Thakur has written to the new CJI requesting to introduce requirement element of transparency in the judicial selection process for everyone know why a particular person got selected in advantage to others.
To present the dangers of hitherto adopted opaque method in Collegium system, he has cited a specific example of Surendra Kumar Srivastava then District Judge, Bhadohi, UP who allegedly was asked a huge money of one crores from a member of the Collegium for elevation as High Court Judge, sometime between October 2011 and February 2012. As per Thakur, the District Judge’s own younger brother, Pramod Srivastava, then posted with him at Lucknow had told him of this demand, the way his brother made his best efforts to fulfill the demand and the way he failed because of there being a huge gap between the demand and the money he could manage with great efforts.
Thakur said that he does agree with the statements made by Hon’ble Sri Lodha on the larger context that higher judiciary must play an important and pivotal role in appointment of judges because as aptly stated, functioning judges have a much better opportunity and chance to know all about the court craft, behaviour, skill, legal knowledge and other aspects of the prospective judges.
“But as a citizen of this nation, I hold equally strong views that the Collegium system got into criticism because it lacked two basic concepts of good governance- transparency and accountability, which led the law-making authority, the Parliament of India, to come up with the National Judicial Appointments Commission Bill, 2014. The way the functioning and decisions of the Collegium system were kept closely guarded secret had definite possibilities of being misused. This must have been the reason for the Department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, formed to study the Judicial Appointments Commission Bill, 2013”, said Thakur.
Thakur has said in his letter that Srivastava, now retired, could never make it to the High Court. Putting these facts, he has requested the CJI to get these facts verified and to introduce sufficient amount of transparency in judicial selection process to completely eliminate any possibility of such alleged impropriety in this process.
