Collegium System: Supreme Court rejects plea seeking disclosure of details from 2018 Collegium meeting on Judges Appoitment | India News

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday has rejected a petition seeking disclosure of the details of a meeting of the collegium held on December 12, 2018.
The petitioner had sought the details under the Right to Information Act.
The court observed that the Collegium is multi-member body, whose tentative decision cannot be brought in public domain.
A bench of Justices MR Shah and CT Ravikumar said that only resolutions drawn and signed by all collegium members can be said to be a final decision. Tentative resolutions drawn upon discussion and consultation among the members cannot be said to be final unless they are signed by all of them, it said.
It further said the petition is based on comments by an ex-Collegium member (Justice Madan B Lokur) on an alleged decision to elevate two HC chief justices. SC said an ex-judge’s remark has no relevance as discussions are not Collegium’s decision.

The petitioner Anjali Bharadwaj had sought details of deliberations during the December 12, 2018 collegium meeting headed by then-CJI Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Madan B Lokur, AK Sikri, SA Bobde and NV Ramana.
As per the Collegium Resolution uploaded in SC website, the December 12, 2018 meeting of these five judges “took certain decisions. However, the required consultation could not be undertaken and completed as the winter vacation of the Court intervened. ”

In a resolution passed on January 10, 2019, the collegium, whose combination was changed due to the retirement of Justice MB Lokur, mentioned that in its meeting on December 12, 2018 only consultations were held on certain names but no final decision was taken.
Justice Lokur in an interview in 2019 had expressed disappointment at the collegium “decisions” from the December 2018 meeting not being uploaded on the SC website.