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Present Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has expressed his concern on many issues faced by the Judiciary and the Government’s relations with it. He was answering to Members’ concerns during the ongoing debate in Lok Sabha while passing of the High Court and Supreme Court Judges (Salaries and Conditions of service) Amendment Bill, 2017.
While quashing the NJAC Act on the ground that the Law Minister is part of the selection committee, Supreme Court claimed that he represented the Prime Minister in the committee. With regard to this he said that if the Prime Minister’s involvement in the selection of other Constitutional functionaries is allowed then why not Judges. He expressed his disappointment with the declaration of the Act as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and said that Parliament must have debated on the issue from the beginning.
While talking about the concept of Separation of Powers, he mentioned that in the landmark case of Keshavananda Bharati, Supreme Court had observed that Parliament cannot amend the basic structure of the Constitution and accepted Separation of Powers as one of the basic features. Judiciary must understand that the doctrine of Separation of Powers applies equally to itself.
With respect to the delay in finalising Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) for appointment of Judges he said that the process is going on. He informed that the Government wants to strengthen the MoP so that many occasions like sending a Judge to jail, and forcing a retired Judge to apologise to the Court do not arise in future by referring to Justice Karnan and Markandey Katju case. Therefore, the Centre is insisting on taking extra precautions to ensure proper screening and scrutiny of candidates recommended.
He said that everyone is well versed with the fact that it is the High Court which has to recommend names to the State Public Service Commission for filling the vacancies in the lower judiciary. Neither the Centre nor the State Governments can be held responsible for it. And on the vacancies in the Supreme Court and the High Courts, the non-finalisation of MoP is not a hindrance to fill the vacancies, and the Centre only insists on proper screening and scrutiny of candidates, before finalising the recommendations.
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