The National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) bill has not been proposed to be reintroduced at this time, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Thursday.
In response to questions from John Britas of the CPI-M and Mallikarjun Kharge, leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, regarding whether the government intended to reintroduce NJAC with ‘suitable modifications,’ law minister Kiren Rijiju stated in a written response that ‘at present there is no such proposal.’
In 2015, the Supreme Court’s top court overturned the NJAC Act, which sought to abolish the collegium system for selecting Supreme Court and high court judges.
Parliament passed the NJAC Bill along with a corresponding amendment to the Constitution with essentially unanimous support. In his criticism of the collegium system, Rijiju had called it ‘alien’ to the Constitution.
In his inaugural address to the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, Vice President and Chair Jagdeep Dhankhar criticised the judiciary for overturning the NJAC law, calling it a ‘severe compromise of parliamentary sovereignty’ and asserting that the three organs should respect the ‘Laxman Rekha.’
Similar opinions were expressed by Dhankhar on two prior occasions in recent memory.
Recently, he had called it a ‘serious’ issue that after the NJAC law was overturned by the supreme court, there was ‘no whisper’ in Parliament.
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