The Evening Wrap: Supreme Court slams government over delay in appointment of judges

Dear reader, We have now made it easier for you to manage your The Hindu newsletter subscriptions in one place! Visit The Hindu newsletters page here Click MANAGE tab and then click LOGIN / SIGN UP If you don’t have an account with The Hindu, please click SIGN UP OR If you already have an account with The Hindu with this email ID, please login using the email ID The Supreme Court on November 28 linked the bitter failure of the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) to the government’s willingness to “cross some Rubicons” and take on the judiciary by delaying Collegium recommendations. The Supreme Court had struck down the NJAC, which gave the government an equal say in judicial appointments to the constitutional courts, in 2015. The judgment had revived the Collegium system of judicial appointments. “There appears to be an unhappiness in the government of the fact that NJAC did not muster the constitutional mandate… That cannot be the reason to not comply with the law of the land,” said a Bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and A.S. Oka. The hearing coincided with a fresh salvo from Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, a relentless critic of the opacity of the Collegium system, aimed at the Supreme Court. Rijiju, in an interview, reportedly dared the judiciary to “issue its own notifications” of appointments if it thought the government was sitting on Collegium recommendations. “Let them give the power to us then, we have no difficulty… When somebody high up says ‘let them do it’, we will do it ourselves… This [Rijiju’s remarks] came from somebody high enough, it should not have,” Justice Kaul shot back when apprised of the Law Minister’s comments by Supreme Court Bar Association president, senior advocate Vikas Singh, in court. The hearing on Monday marked a new high in the tensions simmering for the past few weeks between the judiciary and the government over appointments. Rijiju has been criticising the Collegium system in several public fora, mentioning how the NJAC could have provided a transparent alternative. The Supreme Court had responded by accusing the government, in a judicial order, of using silence and inaction as a ploy to compel the withdrawal of consent by eminent persons considered for judgeships in the constitutional courts. The Constitution Day-eve function had seen Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud make a pointed remark that judiciary and government would not be able to work together to appoint good judges if they spent time finding fault in each other. On November 28, Justice Kaul told Attorney General R. Venkataramani that the government was “effectively frustrating the method of appointment”. Names have been pending for a year and a half. Some of them had been originally recommended way back in 2019 and still not cleared by a government which remains incommunicado. The court accused the government of picking and choosing names from the Collegium list. “What happens is this completely destroys the seniority. The Collegium while sending names keeps many factors in mind,” Justice Kaul said. The court said it was plainly “anguished” by the government’s attitude. “It [government] is crossing some Rubicons by keeping these names pending like this… It cannot go on like this… We went on thinking that things will improve, that it will improve… But for the past two months, everything has come to a complete standstill, whether it is appointments to the High Courts or to the Supreme Court,” Justice Kaul observed. The court said 20% of the judicial posts in High Courts were vacant. Justice Kaul, who is the second senior-most Supreme Court judge and a Collegium member, said Chief Justices of several High Courts have complained about lawyers unwilling to accept invitations to the Bench because of the uncertainty posed by the government’s inaction. Singh said the court should issue contempt notice against the government. “There is no need to be rhetorical,” the AG snapped. “What rhetorical? Are you saying following the law of the land is rhetoric?” Singh asked. “We kept our patience today because the AG appeared… Timelines [for judicial appointments] have gone completely haywire, there have been many aggravating circumstances after that… Don’t make us take decisions on the judicial side on this,” Justice Kaul and Oka told Venkataramani. Venkataramani said he had discussed the issue at the Secretary level, but had questions for which he had to go higher up in the government. He sought more time. “When things need to move, they move in a day. When things don’t need to move, they don’t move for months,” Justice Kaul reacted. The Bench told Venkataramani and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who was present at the hearing, to “advice the government to follow the law of the land”. “If the government itself says ‘I will not adhere to the law of the land’, tomorrow somebody else may say this about another law… You must look at the larger picture,” Justice Kaul told Venkataramani. The court scheduled the case for December 8.. Andhra HC cannot be ‘town planner’, says Supreme Court on high court order for building State capital in 6 months The Supreme Court on November 28 sought responses from farmers and their associations, and the Centre to a plea by the Andhra Pradesh Government challenging the high court decision which said the State legislature “lacked competence” to make any law for shifting, bifurcating or trifurcating the capital. It observed the Andhra Pradesh High Court cannot be a “town planner” or an “engineer” and direct the government that the capital city should come up in six months. A Bench of Justices K.M. Joseph and B.V. Nagarathna also stayed time-bound directions issued by the high court, including the one that said the State will construct and develop Amaravati capital city and capital region within six months. The high court had also ordered the government and the authorities concerned to complete infrastructure development like roads, drainage and electricity and drinking water supply in the Amaravati Capital City and Region within one month. The SC Bench said it needs to examine the issue at length and posted a batch of petitions filed by the State, farmers, associations and their committees for further hearing on January 31. The top court, which asked the parties to file their responses by December, was informed by senior advocate K.K. Venugopal that the State Government has repealed the law for having three different capitals of the State. On March 3, the high court had said the inaction of the State and Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development Authority (APCRDA’s) failure to develop the capital city and capital region as agreed to in terms of the Development Agreement-cum-Irrevocable General Power of Attorney, is nothing but a deviation from the promise made by the State, defeating legitimate expectation. It had said the State and the APCRDA violated the fundamental rights of the petitioners (farmers), as they surrendered their only source of livelihood -- over 33,000 acres of fertile land. China’s anti-lockdown protests spread to dozens of campuses Protests in China against the government’s harsh COVID-19 lockdown measures continued to intensify over the weekend, spreading to dozens of university campuses around the country in an unprecedented challenge to the Communist Party on a scale unseen in decades. The protests against lockdowns were triggered by widespread anger at the death of at least 10 people in a fire in an apartment in the western city of Urumqi, with delays in extinguishing the blaze widely seen by the public as a result of lockdown policies. The protests have coincided with a record outbreak of cases across China in recent days, which have brought fresh lockdowns. The National Health Commission on Sunday reported more than 39,500 cases, the highest since the pandemic began. Late on Saturday night, crowds gathered in Shanghai, China’s largest city and financial capital, on Urumqi Road — named after the city in Xinjiang — to mourn the victims of the fire. Videos on social media showed protesters calling for an end to lockdowns and mass testing. Some raised slogans against Xi and the ruling Communist Party. Several hundred people gathered in Beijing on Sunday night for a rare protest. Some laid out candles to mourn those in Urumqi, while others chanted, “We don’t want COVID tests, we want freedom!” A large police presence was deployed around the protest that took place near the Liangma river in the heart of the capital. Protests this weekend spread to more than 50 Chinese college campuses, according to a list shared online and dozens of protest videos shared on social media. In the elite Tsinghua University in the heart of the Chinese capital — Xi’s alma mater — students gathered on Sunday, chanting: “We need democracy, rule of law, and freedom of expression!” “We haven’t seen scenes like this since 1989,” a veteran Chinese journalist told The Hindu, referring to the Tiananmen Square protests. This weekend, thousands of students gathered across the country, from Sichuan University in the West to Nanjing Communications University in the east. While in China local-level protests against issues ranging from land grabs to environmental pollution are not uncommon, what is now unprecedented is a national-level protest on the same issue, and carried out in direct opposition to a central government policy. Only last month, Xi defended the zero-COVID policy at the Party Congress that marked the start of his third term. Meanwhile, in a related development, the BBC said on Sunday one of its journalists in China had been arrested and beaten by police while covering protests against the country’s zero-Covid policy. Hundreds of people took to the streets in China’s major cities on Sunday in a rare outpouring of public anger against the state. “The BBC is extremely concerned about the treatment of our journalist Ed Lawrence, who was arrested and handcuffed while covering the protests in Shanghai,” the broadcaster said in a statement. Lawrence, working in the country as an accredited journalist, was detained for several hours, during which time he was beaten and kicked by police, according to the BBC. He was later released. “It is very worrying that one of our journalists was attacked in this way whilst carrying out his duties,” the statement said. “We have had no official explanation or apology from the Chinese authorities, beyond a claim by the officials who later released him that they had arrested him for his own good in case he caught Covid from the crowd,” the statement added. “We do not consider this a credible explanation.” WHO renames monkeypox as mpox, citing racism concerns The World Health Organization has renamed monkeypox as mpox, citing concerns the original name of the decades-old animal disease could be construed as discriminatory and racist. The U.N. health agency said in a statement Monday that mpox was its new preferred name for monkeypox, saying that both monkeypox and mpox would be used for the next year while the old name is phased out. WHO said it was concerned by the “racist and stigmatising language” that arose after monkeypox spread to more than 100 countries. It said numerous individuals and countries asked the organisation “to propose a way forward to change the name.” In August, WHO began consulting experts about renaming the disease, shortly after the U.N. agency declared monkeypox’s spread to be a global emergency. To date, there have been more than 80,000 cases identified in dozens of countries that had not previously reported the smallpox-related disease. Until May, monkeypox, a disease that is thought to originate in animals, was not known to trigger large outbreaks beyond central and west Africa. Outside of Africa, nearly all cases have been in gay, bisexual or other men who have sex with men. Scientists believe monkeypox triggered outbreaks in Western countries after spreading via sex at two raves in Belgium and Spain. Vaccination efforts in rich countries, along with targeted control interventions, have mostly brought the disease under control after it peaked in the summer. In Africa, the disease mainly affects people in contact with infected animals such as rodents and squirrels. The majority of monkeypox-related deaths have been in Africa, where there have been almost no vaccines available. U.S. health officials have warned it may be impossible to eliminate the disease there, warning it could be a continuing threat mainly for gay and bisexual men for years to come. Mpox was first named monkeypox in 1958 when research monkeys in Denmark were observed to have a “pox-like” disease, although they are not thought to be the disease’s animal reservoir. Although WHO has named numerous new diseases shortly after they emerged, including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS and COVID-19, this appears to be the first time the agency has attempted to rechristen a disease decades after it was first named. Numerous other diseases, including Japanese encephalitis, German measles, Marburg virus and Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome have been named after geographic regions, which could now be considered prejudicial. WHO has not suggested changing any of those names. In Brief: Legendary athlete P.T. Usha has been elected as the President of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA). Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, previously the Union Sports Minister, congratulated the athlete on her election. The star sprinter Usha is one of the greatest athletes to have ever come out of India and brags four gold medals and seven silvers at the Asian Games. She missed out on a podium finish in the women’s 400m hurdles at the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics by 1/100th of a second. Her timing of 55.42s in LA still holds as a national record. PT Usha and music maestro Ilaiyaraaja were among prominent personalities nominated to the Rajya Sabha recently. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. [logo] The Evening Wrap 28 NOVEMBER 2022 [The Hindu logo] Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. [[Arrow]Open in browser]( [[Mail icon]More newsletters]( ‘Unhappiness’ over NJAC behind govt delay on Collegium recommendations: SC Dear reader, We have now made it easier for you to manage your The Hindu newsletter subscriptions in one place! Visit The Hindu newsletters page here Click MANAGE tab and then click LOGIN / SIGN UP If you don’t have an account with The Hindu, please click SIGN UP OR If you already have an account with The Hindu with this email ID, please login using the email ID The Supreme Court on November 28 [linked the bitter failure of the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) to the government’s willingness to “cross some Rubicons” and take on the judiciary]( by delaying Collegium recommendations. The Supreme Court had struck down the NJAC, which gave the government an equal say in judicial appointments to the constitutional courts, in 2015. The judgment had revived the Collegium system of judicial appointments. “There appears to be an unhappiness in the government of the fact that NJAC did not muster the constitutional mandate… That cannot be the reason to not comply with the law of the land,” said a Bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and A.S. Oka. The hearing coincided with a fresh salvo from Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, a relentless critic of the opacity of the Collegium system, aimed at the Supreme Court. Rijiju, in an interview, reportedly dared the judiciary to “issue its own notifications” of appointments if it thought the government was sitting on Collegium recommendations. “Let them give the power to us then, we have no difficulty… When somebody high up says ‘let them do it’, we will do it ourselves… This [Rijiju’s remarks] came from somebody high enough, it should not have,” Justice Kaul shot back when apprised of the Law Minister’s comments by Supreme Court Bar Association president, senior advocate Vikas Singh, in court. The hearing on Monday marked a new high in the tensions simmering for the past few weeks between the judiciary and the government over appointments. Rijiju has been criticising the Collegium system in several public fora, mentioning how the NJAC could have provided a transparent alternative. The Supreme Court had responded by accusing the government, in a judicial order, of using silence and inaction as a ploy to compel the withdrawal of consent by eminent persons considered for judgeships in the constitutional courts. The Constitution Day-eve function had seen Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud make a pointed remark that judiciary and government would not be able to work together to appoint good judges if they spent time finding fault in each other. On November 28, Justice Kaul told Attorney General R. Venkataramani that the government was “effectively frustrating the method of appointment”. Names have been pending for a year and a half. Some of them had been originally recommended way back in 2019 and still not cleared by a government which remains incommunicado. The court accused the government of picking and choosing names from the Collegium list. “What happens is this completely destroys the seniority. The Collegium while sending names keeps many factors in mind,” Justice Kaul said. The court said it was plainly “anguished” by the government’s attitude. “It [government] is crossing some Rubicons by keeping these names pending like this… It cannot go on like this… We went on thinking that things will improve, that it will improve… But for the past two months, everything has come to a complete standstill, whether it is appointments to the High Courts or to the Supreme Court,” Justice Kaul observed. The court said 20% of the judicial posts in High Courts were vacant. Justice Kaul, who is the second senior-most Supreme Court judge and a Collegium member, said Chief Justices of several High Courts have complained about lawyers unwilling to accept invitations to the Bench because of the uncertainty posed by the government’s inaction. Singh said the court should issue contempt notice against the government. “There is no need to be rhetorical,” the AG snapped. “What rhetorical? Are you saying following the law of the land is rhetoric?” Singh asked. “We kept our patience today because the AG appeared… Timelines [for judicial appointments] have gone completely haywire, there have been many aggravating circumstances after that… Don’t make us take decisions on the judicial side on this,” Justice Kaul and Oka told Venkataramani. Venkataramani said he had discussed the issue at the Secretary level, but had questions for which he had to go higher up in the government. He sought more time. “When things need to move, they move in a day. When things don’t need to move, they don’t move for months,” Justice Kaul reacted. The Bench told Venkataramani and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who was present at the hearing, to “advice the government to follow the law of the land”. “If the government itself says ‘I will not adhere to the law of the land’, tomorrow somebody else may say this about another law… You must look at the larger picture,” Justice Kaul told Venkataramani. The court scheduled the case for December 8.. Andhra HC cannot be ‘town planner’, says Supreme Court on high court order for building State capital in 6 months The Supreme Court on November 28 sought responses from farmers and their associations, and the Centre to a plea by the Andhra Pradesh Government challenging the high court decision which said the State legislature “lacked competence” to make any law for shifting, bifurcating or trifurcating the capital. It observed the [Andhra Pradesh High Court cannot be a “town planner” or an “engineer” and direct the government]( that the capital city should come up in six months. A Bench of Justices K.M. Joseph and B.V. Nagarathna also stayed time-bound directions issued by the high court, including the one that said the State will construct and develop Amaravati capital city and capital region within six months. The high court had also ordered the government and the authorities concerned to complete infrastructure development like roads, drainage and electricity and drinking water supply in the Amaravati Capital City and Region within one month. The SC Bench said it needs to examine the issue at length and posted a batch of petitions filed by the State, farmers, associations and their committees for further hearing on January 31. The top court, which asked the parties to file their responses by December, was informed by senior advocate K.K. Venugopal that the State Government has repealed the law for having three different capitals of the State. On March 3, the high court had said the inaction of the State and Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development Authority (APCRDA’s) failure to develop the capital city and capital region as agreed to in terms of the Development Agreement-cum-Irrevocable General Power of Attorney, is nothing but a deviation from the promise made by the State, defeating legitimate expectation. It had said the State and the APCRDA violated the fundamental rights of the petitioners (farmers), as they surrendered their only source of livelihood -- over 33,000 acres of fertile land. China’s anti-lockdown protests spread to dozens of campuses Protests in China against the government’s harsh COVID-19 lockdown measures [continued to intensify]( over the weekend, spreading to dozens of university campuses around the country in an unprecedented challenge to the Communist Party on a scale unseen in decades. The protests against lockdowns were triggered by widespread anger at the death of at least 10 people in a fire in an apartment in the western city of Urumqi, with delays in extinguishing the blaze widely seen by the public as a result of lockdown policies. The protests have coincided with a record outbreak of cases across China in recent days, which have brought fresh lockdowns. The National Health Commission on Sunday reported more than 39,500 cases, the highest since the pandemic began. Late on Saturday night, crowds gathered in Shanghai, China’s largest city and financial capital, on Urumqi Road — named after the city in Xinjiang — to mourn the victims of the fire. Videos on social media showed protesters calling for an end to lockdowns and mass testing. Some raised slogans against Xi and the ruling Communist Party. Several hundred people gathered in Beijing on Sunday night for a rare protest. Some laid out candles to mourn those in Urumqi, while others chanted, “We don’t want COVID tests, we want freedom!” A large police presence was deployed around the protest that took place near the Liangma river in the heart of the capital. Protests this weekend spread to more than 50 Chinese college campuses, according to a list shared online and dozens of protest videos shared on social media. In the elite Tsinghua University in the heart of the Chinese capital — Xi’s alma mater — students gathered on Sunday, chanting: “We need democracy, rule of law, and freedom of expression!” “We haven’t seen scenes like this since 1989,” a veteran Chinese journalist told The Hindu, referring to the Tiananmen Square protests. This weekend, thousands of students gathered across the country, from Sichuan University in the West to Nanjing Communications University in the east. While in China local-level protests against issues ranging from land grabs to environmental pollution are not uncommon, what is now unprecedented is a national-level protest on the same issue, and carried out in direct opposition to a central government policy. Only last month, Xi defended the zero-COVID policy at the Party Congress that marked the start of his third term. Meanwhile, in a related development, the BBC said on Sunday one of its journalists in China had been arrested and beaten by police while covering protests against the country’s zero-Covid policy. Hundreds of people took to the streets in China’s major cities on Sunday in a rare outpouring of public anger against the state. “The BBC is extremely concerned about the treatment of our journalist Ed Lawrence, who was arrested and handcuffed while covering the protests in Shanghai,” the broadcaster said in a statement. Lawrence, working in the country as an accredited journalist, was detained for several hours, during which time he was beaten and kicked by police, according to the BBC. He was later released. “It is very worrying that one of our journalists was attacked in this way whilst carrying out his duties,” the statement said. “We have had no official explanation or apology from the Chinese authorities, beyond a claim by the officials who later released him that they had arrested him for his own good in case he caught Covid from the crowd,” the statement added. “We do not consider this a credible explanation.” WHO renames monkeypox as mpox, citing racism concerns The World Health Organization has [renamed monkeypox as mpox]( citing concerns the original name of the decades-old animal disease could be construed as discriminatory and racist. The U.N. health agency said in a statement Monday that mpox was its new preferred name for monkeypox, saying that both monkeypox and mpox would be used for the next year while the old name is phased out. WHO said it was concerned by the “racist and stigmatising language” that arose after monkeypox spread to more than 100 countries. It said numerous individuals and countries asked the organisation “to propose a way forward to change the name.” In August, WHO began consulting experts about renaming the disease, shortly after the U.N. agency declared monkeypox’s spread to be a global emergency. To date, there have been more than 80,000 cases identified in dozens of countries that had not previously reported the smallpox-related disease. Until May, monkeypox, a disease that is thought to originate in animals, was not known to trigger large outbreaks beyond central and west Africa. Outside of Africa, nearly all cases have been in gay, bisexual or other men who have sex with men. Scientists believe monkeypox triggered outbreaks in Western countries after spreading via sex at two raves in Belgium and Spain. Vaccination efforts in rich countries, along with targeted control interventions, have mostly brought the disease under control after it peaked in the summer. In Africa, the disease mainly affects people in contact with infected animals such as rodents and squirrels. The majority of monkeypox-related deaths have been in Africa, where there have been almost no vaccines available. U.S. health officials have warned it may be impossible to eliminate the disease there, warning it could be a continuing threat mainly for gay and bisexual men for years to come. Mpox was first named monkeypox in 1958 when research monkeys in Denmark were observed to have a “pox-like” disease, although they are not thought to be the disease’s animal reservoir. Although WHO has named numerous new diseases shortly after they emerged, including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS and COVID-19, this appears to be the first time the agency has attempted to rechristen a disease decades after it was first named. Numerous other diseases, including Japanese encephalitis, German measles, Marburg virus and Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome have been named after geographic regions, which could now be considered prejudicial. WHO has not suggested changing any of those names. In Brief: Legendary athlete [P.T. Usha has been elected as the President of the Indian Olympic Association]( (IOA). Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, previously the Union Sports Minister, congratulated the athlete on her election. The star sprinter Usha is one of the greatest athletes to have ever come out of India and brags four gold medals and seven silvers at the Asian Games. She missed out on a podium finish in the women’s 400m hurdles at the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics by 1/100th of a second. Her timing of 55.42s in LA still holds as a national record. PT Usha and music maestro Ilaiyaraaja were among prominent personalities nominated to the Rajya Sabha recently. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. 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