Collegium system has sufficient safeguards: Supreme Court imposes costs on lawyer for attempt to block appointment of Telangana High Court judge

The Supreme Court on Friday imposed costs of ₹ 5 lakh on a lawyer, B Sailesh Saxena for filing a petition to stall the appointment of Telangana High Court Registrar General Venkateswara Reddy as judge of the High Court (B Sailesh Saxena v. Union of India)..A Bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and MM Sundresh also stated that the Collegium system has sufficient safeguards to ensure that only fit candidates are appointed as judges."The process of appointment of judges to the High Court is under a well known established process where the collegium of the High Court considers recommending the names and in case of judicial officers by seniority and on merits. Thereafter, the proposed IB inputs and other inputs are obtained and the Government processes the names. The collegium of the Supreme Court has the benefit of all the material before taking a call on whether to recommend the name or not. The appointment takes place thereafter by issuance of warrants of appointment. Thus sufficient safeguards exist in the system," the Court said. .The petition by Saxena is an endevaour to harass Reddy and abuse court process, the Bench said. The Court also noted how the petitioner had previously filed a writ petition before the Telangana High Court making allegations against Reddy at whose instance a first information report (FIR) had been lodged against the petitioner. The complaint lodged by Reddy, who was then acting in the capacity as the then Registrar (Judicial), was pursuant to a direction issued by a single judge of the Telangana High Court. This itself came about after the petitioner had filed certain petitions in which writ petitioners were found to be non-existent persons.The judgement in the petition filed by the petitioner in High Court revealed these facts and contained adverse observations against the petitioner. The writ petition before the High Court was, therefore, found to be thoroughly misconceived and an abuse of process of law and a counterblast to the series of criminal complaints in which persons belonging to the “so-called noble profession got involved”.The Supreme Court took note of the above to observe that nothing seemed to have deterred the petitioner from filing the present petition before the top court. "We are surprised as the brazenness of the petitioner now filing the present petition under Article 32 of the Constitution of India, the aforesaid being the finding against him, to now somehow see that the elevation of respondent No. 4 (Reddy) does not take place on the account of these proceedings initiated by the petitioner. This is gross abuse of process of law," the Court said. Since nothing else seems to deter the petitioner in such endeavours, appropriate imposition of costs seems to be the only solution, the Court opined. "We thus dismiss the writ petition with costs of Rs. 5 lakh," the Supreme Court ordered.The Supreme Court Collegium had on August 17 recommended the names of Reddy and six others for elevation to High Court..[Read Order]