Becoming HC judge is tougher now: Less than 50% make it

NEW DELHI: For three decades, lawyers were virtually assured of becoming high court judges once their names were recommended by the HC collegia to the CJI-led three-member Supreme Court collegium. The success rate was 85-90% then, but now it has become much tougher as less than 50% of those recommended were cleared by the SC collegium, which subjected the persons, aspiring to become constitutional court judges, to a suitability test through interview/interaction, reports Dhananjay Mahapatra.
Earlier, the SC collegium had a liberal scrutiny of antecedents by focusing only on the number of important cases argued by the lawyers and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) report detailing their reputation among the advocate community. Almost all the lawyers recommended by HC collegia — barring 10-15% who were dropped because of adverse IB reports or below par income signifying lack of practice — made it to the final list of names sent to the Centre for appointment.

Such was the ease of scrutiny that little over a decade ago, the Supreme Court collegium had approved the appointment of a sitting CJI’s sister as a judge of a HC despite her annual income being less than Rs 1 lakh. Her appointment assured her of a judge’s pension.
‘Interviews give first-hand info about legal acumen’
New Delhi: A month after becoming CJI, Justice Sanjiv Khanna in consultation with justices B R Gavai and Surya Kant decided to conduct personal interaction (interview) of the people recommended by HC collegia to understand their judicial outlook and suitability for judgeship in a constitutional court.
This move became expedient, despite not being part of the procedure for appointment of HC judges devised by SC through two judgments in 1990s, given the increasing number of controversies created by few motor-mouth judges, some shocking judgments by HC judges and the issue of corruption.
SC was forced to take suo motu cognisance of utterances of judges on public platform and judgments that gave skewed meaning to attempt to rape. The interaction/interview with aspiring constitutional court judges has reduced the success rate to below 50% in past few months.
As many as 101 names were sent by collegia of 12 HCs – Andhra Pradesh, Allahabad, Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Gujarat, Manipur, Orissa, Patna, Rajasthan, Telangana and Uttarakhand. But the collegium comprising CJI Khanna, and Justices Gavai and Kant patiently interviewed all of them and finally selected only 49 of them as suitable for appointment as judges of the HC, which is less than 50% of the recommended names.
“Thank God we started interviewing the candidates. It gives us first-hand information about not only the legal acumen and experience of the lawyers, but also their suitability for judgeship. It is tedious to interview candidates at length, but it makes the selection fairer,” collegium judges told TOI.