Supreme Court: A bench of Uday Umesh Lalit, CJ. Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud, Sanjay Kishan Kaul, S. Abdul Nazeer and K.M. Joseph, JJ. has passed the following resolution on 09.10.2022.
A formal meeting took place on 26.09.2022 for filling up vacancies of judges in the Supreme Court, and names of eleven judges were considered.
For the first time the procedure of circulating the judgments of the prospective candidates and making an objective assessment of their relative merit was introduced in the meeting held on 26.09.2022, and though the name of Dipankar Dutta was cleared in that meeting; a demand was raised by some of the members of the Collegium that the consideration of the names of ten other judges was deferred till 30.09.2022.
The proposal initiated by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) had concurrence from Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice K.M. Joseph., however, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice S. Abdul Nazeer objected to the process of selection and appointing judges by circulation.
The matter was, therefore, ideally suited to have a discussion across the table amongst the Judges forming the Collegium. However, a letter dated 07.10.2022 has been received from the Union Law Minister requesting the CJI to nominate his successor to take over the office of CJI w.e.f. 09.11.2022
Thus, in such circumstances, no further steps can be taken and the unfinished work in the meeting called for 30.09.2022 was closed, without any further deliberation.
