Citizens have right to know who their judges are: Justice Ujjal Bhuyan calls for greater transparency in Collegium process

Supreme Court judge Justice Ujjal Bhuyan on Saturday said the deliberations relating to the elevation and transfer of judges by the Supreme Court Collegium largely remain confidential and that the opacity surrounding the appointments process runs contrary to the principle of judicial transparency.

Supreme Court judge Justice Ujjal Bhuyan on Saturday said the deliberations relating to the elevation and transfer of judges by the Supreme Court Collegium largely remain confidential and that the opacity surrounding the appointments process runs contrary to the principle of judicial transparency. He said reasons for rejecting or deferring a recommendation are rarely disclosed in full and asserted that citizens have a right to know what is happening in the courts and who would be their judges.

"While carrying out the next assessment on the scale of Judicial Transparency Index, I may request the JALDI team to also look into the aspect of opacity of the collegium system. Deliberations on elevation and transfer of judges remain confidential. Reasons for rejecting or deferring a recommendation are rarely disclosed in full. And the criteria applied are not codified in any publicly disclosed instrument. It is a very important issue. Citizens have a right to know what is happening in the courts. They have a right to know who would be their judges. They have a right to know judgments. These should be in the public domain", the judge said. Justice Bhuyan was speaking at the launch of the Judicial Transparency Index: Assessing Disclosure of Information by the Supreme Court and the High Courts, prepared by the Justice, Access and Lowering Delays in India (JALDI) Initiative at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, as a keynote speaker.

The report is the first systematic study assessing transparency practices across India's higher judiciary and evaluates disclosure of information by the Supreme Court and High Courts across judicial processes, institutional governance and administration, and judicial and administrative personnel. Praising the initiative as commendable, Justice Bhuyan praised the initiative. He, however, said that future editions of the index report should also assess transparency in the Collegium system. The judge added that the judiciary's own constitutive processes deserve the same scrutiny that judicial functioning receives.

The judge also expressed concern that recent Collegium resolutions recommending appointments to constitutional courts no longer record reasons for recommending candidates, unlike earlier resolutions. "I have seen that the last three statements of the Supreme Court Collegium do not contain any reason at all for recommending elevation, as opposed to the earlier statements where each of those would give some reasons. It may be said there were copy-paste reasons, etc., but I have noticed the last three do not contain any reason at all. It is going back on the transparency principle."

Referring to a previous Collegium resolution reiterating the recommendation of Senior Advocate Saurabh Kirpal for appointment as a judge, Justice Bhuyan said he found the reasons recorded by the Supreme Court convincing, but noted that despite more than three-and-a-half years having passed, no appointment had materialised. Beginning his address with the philosophical foundations of "open" justice, Justice Bhuyan said every legal system that claims to administer justice must answer an old and uncomfortable question -- who watches the watchman?

Referring to the writings of Plato, Hegel and Jeremy Bentham, he said publicity in judicial proceedings is "not an incidental virtue of governance but its very precondition". He added that the principle of open justice is firmly embedded in Indian jurisprudence through constitutional and statutory provisions mandating open courts, subject to limited exceptions. Justice Bhuyan also welcomed the judicial transparency index report as an important contribution towards strengthening institutional openness. He noted that while the Indian judiciary has taken "significant strides" towards greater transparency, much more remains to be done to encourage systemic transparency. He congratulated Jyotika Randhawa (JALDI) and Aarogya Sen Gupta (Vidhi) and their respective teams at JALDI and Vidhi for preparing what he described as a valuable resource for strengthening openness within the judiciary. (ANI)