HC dismisses appeal challenging order denying details of 2018 SC collegium

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday dismissed an appeal challenging a single judge's order rejecting a plea seeking the agenda of the Supreme Court collegium's meeting held on December 12, 2018, when certain decisions were purportedly taken on the elevation of judges to the apex court.

A bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad said the order of the single judge, as well as the orders of the authorities refusing to direct disclosure, did not require any interference.

Activist Anjali Bhardwaj's appeal was filed challenging the single judge's March 30 order by which it had dismissed her petition against the Central Information Commission's order rejecting an RTI appeal seeking the agenda of the Supreme Court collegium's meeting.

The high court noted that a perusal of a collegium resolution of January 2019 indicated that it met on December 12, 2018, to consider the names for appointment of Supreme Court judges but the “required consultation could not be undertaken”.

It added that an earlier resolution, which stated that decisions taken by the collegium would be put on the website of the Supreme Court, does not indicate that even those decisions that have not been either finalized or crystallized into a resolution have to be uploaded.

''Only those decisions pertaining to information stipulated in the Resolution dated 03.10.2017 need to be uploaded on the website,'' said the high court as it further noted that the collegium composition also changed after December 2018, and matters were considered afresh.

It also observed that the reliance placed by Bhardwaj on certain news articles and the excerpt from the autobiography of a former Chief Justice of India “fails to demonstrate as to whether the decisions allegedly taken were merely verbal or had been crystallised into a written resolution”.

“The reasoning of the learned Single Judge with respect to the fact that no resolution was drawn on 12.12.2018 does not require any interference. Resultantly, no interference is required reversing the orders of the authorities below and the Order passed by the learned Single Judge. The appeal is dismissed with the above observations,” the court said.

Before the single judge, Bhardwaj had challenged the CIC's December 16, 2021 order by which her second appeal was dismissed and had sought direction to the authorities to disclose the available information sought under the February 26, 2019, RTI application.

The petition had said that on January 23, 2019, Justice Madan B Lokur, who was a part of the collegium meeting and retired on December 30, 2018, in an interview expressed his disappointment that the December 12, 2018 collegium resolution was not uploaded on the Supreme Court website.

According to former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi's autobiography 'Justice for the Judge', the names of Justice Pradeep Nandrajog, the then Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court, and Justice Rajendra Menon, the then Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, had received the nod for the elevation to the Supreme Court in the collegium meeting on December 12, 2018.

The matter allegedly got leaked after which the issue was kept in abeyance by Justice Gogoi till January 2019 because of winter break which started on December 15, 2018, the book said.

In January 2019, a new collegium was constituted after the retirement of Justice Lokur.

The new collegium, in its resolution on January 10, 2019, did not clear the names of Justice Nandrajog and Justice Menon for elevation to the Supreme Court, according to the book.

The petition did not mention the names of any judges whose names were allegedly cleared.

Initially, Bhardwaj had filed an RTI before the Supreme Court seeking copies of the agenda, decisions taken and resolutions passed in the December 12, 2018 meeting.

However, the Supreme Court Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) refused to provide the information and while disposing of the appeal against the denial by the CPIO, the First Appellate Authority (FAA) held that in view of the subsequent collegium resolution of January 10, 2019, it was clear that though certain decisions were taken in the collegium meeting of December 12, 2018, the required consultations could not be completed and no resolution was formally passed.

In the second appeal, the court was informed, that the CIC also relied upon the January 10, 2019 resolution and held that the agenda of the collegium's December 12, 2018 meeting was clear from the subsequent resolution of January 10, 2019, and the copy of the decision and the resolution of December 2018 did not exist on record in terms of Section 2 (f) of the RTI Act and therefore, could not be supplied to the petitioner.

The petition had sought setting aside of the CIC order on grounds that the petitioner has asked for ''a copy of the agenda'' of the collegium meeting and not a summary or reference thereof.

While dismissing the petition, the single judge had said that in the absence of any formal resolution being adopted and signed by the members of the Supreme Court collegium for the said meeting, the authorities rightly took the position that no material was liable to be disclosed.