Vice-President questions involvement of CJI in executive appointments

Jagdeep Dhankhar
| Photo Credit: PTI

Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Friday asked how the Chief Justice of India can be involved in executive appointments such as that of the CBI director as the V-P questioned the legal rationale behind it.

Speaking at the National Judicial Academy in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal, Mr. Dhankhar said, “How can in a country like ours or in any democracy, by statutory prescription, Chief Justice of India participates in the selection of the CBI director! Can there be any legal rationale for it? I can appreciate that the Statutory prescription took shape because the executive of the day has yielded to a judicial verdict. But time has come to revisit. This surely does not merge with democracy.”

Talking about separation of powers, the Vice-President said that the executive governance by a judicial decree is a “Constitutional paradox”.

“Executive governance by judicial decree is a Constitutional paradox that the largest democracy on the planet cannot afford any longer. When institutions forget their bounds, democracy is remembered by the wounds this forgetfulness imparts. The Constitution envision harmony, synergetic approach to be in sync, surely. A concert of chaos was never in the contemplation of the founding fathers of the Constitution. Constitutional consultation without institutional coordination is mere constitutional tokenism,” he said.

The Vice-President also said that the judiciary’s public presence must be “primarily through judgments” and that any other mode of expression “avoidably undermines institutional dignity”.

“With the total command that I have, I exercise restraint to assert. I seek revisitation of the present state of affairs so that we get back to the groove, a groove that can give sublimity to our judiciary. When we look around the globe, we never find judges reflecting the way we see here on all issues,” he added.

Mr. Dhankhar also raised concerns over the strength of constitutional benches of the Supreme Court and said that in the guise of interpreting the Constitution, there can be no “arrogation of authority”.

“When I became a parliamentary affairs minister in 1990, There were eight judges… [and] more often than not, all the eight judges sat together. When the strength of the Supreme Court was eight judges, under Article 145(3), there was a stipulation that interpretation of the Constitution will be by a bench of five judges or more. And constitution allows the highest court of the land to interpret the constitution. You interpret what is interpretable. In the guise of interpretation, there can be no arrogation of authority,” he said.