Checks and Balances Revisited

This essay examines the role that the executive, represented by the Union Minister in-charge of Law and Justice, was expected to play on the National Judicial Appointments Commission. The author charts a history of what the Constituent Assembly envisaged the role of the executive to be and how this role eventually unfolded in the appointments process. The description of the history culminates with the observation about how the collegium system of appointments, meant to counteract executive interference in appointments, has come to be mired in controversy itself. This essay then engages with the judgment in the NJAC Case, and how the bench frowned upon the presence of the Law Minister on the NJAC. This essay contests that the Supreme Court’s apprehension that the Law Minister could cloud the views of the other members of the NJAC was based on conjectures and surmises.