A third letter has landed at Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra’s doorstep, imploring him to hold a “full court” to discuss “institutional issues” and the Supreme Court’s “future”.
Supreme Court Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Madan Lokur wrote the brief two-sentence letter, The Indian Express reported on Wednesday. Justice Gogoi, in terms of seniority, is next in line to succeed CJI Misra, whose term ends in October.
The letter comes two days after seven Opposition parties moved an impeachment notice against Misra in the Upper House, where vice-president and Rajya Sabha chairman Venjaiah Naidu shot it down, saying the notice lacked substantial merit.
The Indian Express said the CJI has not responded to the letter. The letter was delivered to him on Sunday.
This letter follows two other letters by senior members of the Collegium to the CJI in recent weeks.
Justice Kurian Joseph wrote to the Chief Justice of India on April 9, urging him to act on non-appointment of judges by the Centre. The “very life and existence” of the Supreme Court of India is under threat and “history will not pardon us” if the court doesn’t respond to the government’s unprecedented act of sitting on the collegium’s recommendation to elevate a judge and a senior advocate to the apex court, Justice Kurian Joseph said in the letter.
“It is the first time in the history of this court where nothing is known as to what has happened to a recommendation after three months,” Justice Kurian Joseph wrote.
The Collegium had recommended Senior Advocate Indu Malhotra and Chief Justice of Uttarakhand High Court Justice K M Joseph to be elevated as Supreme Court judges on January 10. But the Law Ministry had sought legal opinion to issue the warrant of appointment only for Indu Malhotra, according to an earlier Indian Express report. It allegedly wanted to keep Justice K M Joseph’s case pending because, some believe, Justice K M Joseph in April 2016 had ruled against the Centre in the case of imposing President’s Rule in Uttarakhand.
The decision to elevate Justice Joseph to the Supreme Court had come even as a May 2016 Collegium recommendation to transfer him from Uttarakhand to the High Court of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana was still pending with the government, a January 11 Hindu report had informed.
In the letter sent to 22 other judges, Justice Joseph also urged the CJI to constitute a Bench of seven senior-most judges to take up the matter on the judicial side.
Earlier, on March 21, Justice J Chelameswar had written to all judges, asking the CJI to call a full court to discuss government interference in appointment of judges to the High Court after the Modi government directly wrote to the Karnataka High Court over an inquiry into a judicial officer, whose name had been reiterated by the Collegium for appointment as a High Court judge.
The CJI neither replied to the letter nor did he call a full court.
Incidentally, the four judges who have recently written independently to the CJI had held an unprecedented press conference on January 12, and made public a letter they had written to the CJI in November, expressing their concern about the functioning of the Supreme Court.