The Supreme Court declined to urgently review a plea concerning the judgement which struck down the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) leading to the revival of the collegium system.
When the matter was mentioned, the bench comprising Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra along with Justices Amitava Roy and AM Khanwilkar observed that there was no urgency to review the 2015 verdict pronounced by a five-judge Constitution Bench.
The matter takes on more importance since the vacancies in the top court rose to six with Justice PC Pant's retirement on Tuesday. The newly sworn in Chief Justice will have to fill up as many as 10 vacancies before he demits office in October 2018.
The newly realigned collegium — which appoints judges in the higher judiciary — will have to deal with 407 vacancies across 24 high courts in the country. With more than three crore cases pending in the judiciary, the situation is dire.
In 2013, while speaking at an event, former CJI India Altamas Kabir had said that there were only 15 judges for every one million population in India, making it one of the lowest judge-population ratios in the world.
Four years later, not much has changed.
The discord between the current NDA -government and the judiciary under former Chief Justice TS Thakur came to a head when the SC scrapped the NJAC on October 17, 2015.
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