The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a petition questioning the government’s lobbying for the election of Supreme Court’s sitting judge, Justice Dalveer Bhandari as a member of the International Court of Justice.
A bench of Justices Altamas Kabir, J. Chelameswar and Ranjan Gogoi found nothing wrong in the lobbying by the government for a nominee from the country to a post in any international forum and rather said that it would be “honour” to the country to have a sitting SC judge as a member of ICJ after three decades if Justice Bhandari succeeds.
The last such appointment directly from the Supreme Court was in 1980 of the then Chief Justice of India R.S. Pathak, the bench reminded.
The lobbying by the government for Justice Bhandari was challenged in a PIL filed by a Delhi University’s LL.M student Rahul Srivastava, which stated that the involvement of the government in the exercise would affect the “independence” of the judiciary. His counsel Prashant Bhushan argued that if Justice Bhandari does not succeed to get the appointment, he would come back to the Supreme Court and would hear cases against the government. This would raise doubts about his “impartiality” after government had come in his support. “If he wanted the government to lobby for him, then he should have first resigned,” Mr Bhushan argued.
Justice Kabir, heading the bench, however, discounted such apprehension saying “a judge should not be equated with a political nominee. There is a difference in nominating a person by a political party and the government.”
Attorney General G E Vahanvati raised the question on the “bona fide” of the petition coming a day ahead of ICJ’s election process. “The matter (proposing Justice Bhandari’s name) is in public knowledge since December 5, 2011, but the petition is filed a day before the election,” Vahanvati said while questioning the “real motive” behind it.