letter to arun jaitley
TRANSCRIPT
CAMPAIGN FOR JUDICIAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND REFORMS6/6 basement Jangpura B, Delhi – 110014
judicialreforms.org
Patrons: Justice P.B.Sawant, Justice H.Suresh, Shri Shanti Bhushan,, Prof. B.B.Pande,, Dr. Bhaskar Rao, Ms. Arundhati Roy, Dr. Banwari Lal Sharma, Shri Pradip Prabhu, Prof Babu Mathew, Dr. Baba Adhav, Ms. Kamini
Jaiswal, Shri Mihir Desai, Shri Manoj MittaExecutive Committee: Prashant Bhushan, Venkatesh Sundaram, Indu Prakash Singh, , Devvrat, Nikhil Dey,
Cheryl D’souza, Alok Prasanna Kumar, Anjali Bharadwaj, Dipa Sinha, Annie Raja, Ramesh Nathan, Siddharth Sharma, Indira Unninayar, Madhuresh Kumar, Vijayan MJ, Harish Narasappa, Vipul Mudgal, Koninika Ray
To,
The Hon’ble Finance MinisterMinistry of Finance Department of Economic AffairsNorth BlockNew Delhi – 110001
16.03.2016
Subject: Requesting public consultation on changes to memorandum of procedure for appointment of judges
Dear Mr. Arun Jaitley,
The Campaign for Judicial Accountability & Reforms (CJAR) is a response of people’s movements, campaign organizations and individuals working on public interest issues, to ensure a judicial system that is far more accountable, accessible and sensitive to the poor, marginalized and common people of this country. The Campaign since its inception, has highlighted several serious problems with the Indian Judicial system which have at various points in time manifested in specific cases, such as its lack of affordability to the common citizen, its inaccessibility to the poor and marginalized, the opaque system of appointment of its judges, its elitist and anti poor bias, the lack of proper redressal mechanisms to address grievances against judges, inordinate delays in deciding matters and several instances of corruption in the higher judiciary.
Following its judgment in the Supreme Court Advocates on Record Association v Union of India striking down the Constitution (Ninety Ninth Amendment) Act, 2014 and the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, 2015, the Supreme Court held post-decisional hearings on the need to reform the Collegium system of appointment of judges. The outcome of these hearings was its order dated 16.12.2015 which was concerned with four areas on which the Memorandum of Procedure for Appointment of Judges to the High Court and Supreme Court (MoP) could be changed namely, eligibility criteria, transparency, creation of a secretariat, and complaints procedure apart from any other miscellaneous aspects. While the Supreme Court did not pass any orders of a binding nature on the Union Government, it has made these suggestions for “ensuring
transparency and accountability” in the appointment process. However, the MoP, at present, does not reflect any of the changes and the appointment process has carried on nonetheless with further appointments and transfers being made by the Supreme Court collegium under the extant MoP.
There have been various reports in the media in the last few weeks that a government committee is now finalising this Memorandum of Procedure in consultation with the Chief Justice of India. We would like to request that this important process of review and change in the memorandum of procedure be made open to public consultation as well. As a judicial accountability watchdog, the Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reform and the various organisations and movements that are a part of it have long standing experience in working on issues of transparency and accountability. We enclose a proposal with our suggestions for changes to the memorandum of procedure which has been worked on together with the VIDHI Centre for Legal Policy.
We would like to request for an appointment to meet with you at your earliest convenience and an appropriate step to be taken to ensure that consultation with civil society does infact take place on these proposed changes.
Thanking you.
Yours sincerely,
Prashant Bhushan
Convenor
Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms