When asked for a clear picture, the Law Ministry reached for fog.
In a recent Rajya Sabha session, the Centre sidestepped pointed questions about judicial appointments — specifically, how many recommendations from the Supreme Court Collegium have been accepted, rejected, or left to gather dust over the past five years.
Congress MPs Vivek K Tankha and Mallikarjun Kharge had demanded specifics: names cleared by the Collegium but stalled by the Centre, year-wise numbers, and reasons behind the bottlenecks. Instead of clarity, what they received was a general statement that danced around the issue.
The Ministry, through Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal, stated that 178 High Court judge proposals are somewhere in the bureaucratic pipeline. But when it came to identifying how many had been outright rejected or silently shelved, there was radio silence. The response also noted that 193 vacancies don’t even have names against them yet, as the High Court Collegiums haven’t sent proposals.
Kharge further asked whether there was a timeline in place for clearing the pile of pending names. The answer: no timeline. Instead, the Ministry served up a well-worn line about how judicial appointments are a “continuous, integrated and collaborative process,” requiring sign-offs from multiple constitutional authorities.
Another prickly question came from Tankha, who asked whether any names had been repeatedly sent by the Collegium and then sent back or ignored. No names, no numbers — just a curt statistic: 35 Supreme Court judges and 554 High Court judges have been appointed between January 2020 and July 2025. Also, 349 names were “remitted” — i.e., returned to High Courts — during this period.
What went unanswered, however, were the names that keep getting pushed back into oblivion. The cold statistics offered no warmth to the real question: is the executive stalling judicial appointments, and if so, why?
For now, Parliament remains without answers. And the Collegium’s recommendations continue to wait at the government’s doorstep — unanswered and unexplained.
