NEW DELHI, Jan. 16 -- The recent decision of the Collegium of the Supreme Court on January 10, 2019, in recommending the names of Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and Sanjiv Khanna to the Court has evoked strong reaction inasmuch as Justice Khanna's appointment will entail the supersession of Justices Pradeep Nandrajog, Gita Mittal and S Ravindra Bhat of the Delhi High Court. Suppose, for example, we were in the pre-collegium regime, such a decision would have been described as being arbitrary and whimsical because all of the three proposed to be superseded are fine judges and are neither lacking integrity nor judicial competence.
This decision once again exposes a chink in the process of appointment of judges, a process arrogated to itself by t...