The judiciary and the Modi government have been in a war of words over judicial appointments. While this debate is not new, the intensity has increased since a new chief justice, DY Chandrachud, took office in November.
On January 11, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar criticised the basic structure doctrine that the Supreme Court devised in 1973. This precept maintains that the legislature cannot make amendments that would remove essential features of the Constitution.
The Supreme Court had used this doctrine to struck down the National Judicial Appointments Commission in 2015, which was brought by the Bharatiya Janata Party to give the primacy to the executive in judicial appointments. Currently, the judiciary has the final word when it comes to judicial appointments.
Recently, the government has also written to the chief justice, suggesting that a government nominee can be part of a selection panel that would shortlist eligible names to the collegium. In the collegium system, the senior judges of the Supreme Court recommend names for the Supreme Court and High Courts and the government is expected to follow them
Raju Ramachandran is a senior advocate at the Supreme Court of India and was an additional solicitor general of India from 2002 to 2004. Having long been a critic of the basic…
