New Delhi: Nearly a decade after the Supreme Court’s collegium took the unprecedented step of making its resolutions public to bring transparency to judicial appointments, questions about its commitment to disclosure and internal consistency continue to be raised.
While the practice of publishing resolutions was introduced as a step towards openness, the absence of clear guidelines has resulted in uneven disclosure, inviting criticism of the appointment process.
The collegium system is a judicially evolved mechanism to appoint judges to the Supreme Court of India and all high courts.
At different points in time and under various collegium resolutions, finalising names of those selected to become high court judges has come with relatively detailed descriptions to bare announcements.
Records indicate that these variations have often coincided with changes in the composition of the collegium.
The absence of predictable and uniform disclosure standards has allowed critics and the government to repeatedly question the judiciary’s commitment to transparency in the appointments process.
A brief openness, followed by silence
In 2015, while striking down the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) as unconstitutional to preserve judicial independence and the separation of powers, the Supreme Court itself acknowledged the collegium’s deficiencies in transparency, accountability, and objectivity, and called for reforms.
During the tenure of CJI T.S. Thakur, in 2016, differences within the collegium came into the open when Justice J. Chelameswar boycotted a collegium meeting, objecting to the practice of not recording minutes of discussions, dissent, or the basis of decisions.
His decision underscored concerns about the absence of formal documentation and highlighted internal disagreements over how collegium deliberations should be conducted and recorded.
With this, the pressure grew on the collegium to demonstrate greater openness and accountability.
In response, Chief Justice Dipak Misra, in 2017, began publishing collegium resolutions, marking a significant departure from decades of complete opacity.
During this period, the Supreme Court began issuing detailed collegium resolutions, setting out the consultative steps behind appointments.
The resolutions identified the judges of the top court consulted, confirmed the candidates’ familiarity with the high courts concerned, recorded whether state governments had given their inputs, noted consultations with the Intelligence Bureau, and directly addressed complaints against candidates.
For the first time, the judicial appointments process was accompanied by a discernible paper trail.
The shift towards greater disclosure, however, proved short-lived.
After CJI Ranjan Gogoi assumed office in 2018, collegium resolutions became more concise, largely limited to announcing decisions without setting out detailed reasoning.
While information continued to be disclosed, the resolutions offered little insight into the basis of the decisions. This almost became the norm, as the format continued under succeeding CJIs, S. Bobde (2019 – 2021), N. V. Ramana (2021-2022), and U. U. Lalit (2022).
CJI S. Bobde opposed publishing detailed collegium resolutions. He argued that placing the full deliberations or adverse opinions in the public domain could seriously damage the reputation and prospects of candidates who were ultimately not selected.
The trend was briefly reversed when Justice D.Y. Chandrachud assumed office in 2022. Under him, the collegium restored a level of details, similar to resolutions of CJI Misra’s era.
However, this approach proved short-lived.
In November 2025, Chief Justice B.R. Gavai declared that the collegium had unanimously resolved not to publish detailed reasons for its decisions, citing concerns that disclosure might adversely affect the career prospects of candidates under consideration.
The current collegium under Justice Surya Kant continues along the same course, publishing bare statements, as seen for recent appointments published on the SC portal.
Judicial appointments & reasons
Periods of comparatively detailed disclosures have been followed by phases of complete opacity, suggesting an absence of institutional commitment to a settled disclosure framework.
The absence of clearly articulated and consistently applied selection criteria has made it difficult to assess appointment decisions.
Speaking to ThePrint, Senior Advocate Saurabh Kirpal said, “Without such disclosure, it becomes impossible to assess whether the decision was based on valid and legitimate considerations or was arbitrary. At the very least, even if detailed deliberations cannot be made public, the reasons must, at least, be formally recorded, even if the Court chooses not to place the full rationale in the public domain.”
Offering a different perspective, Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde said that a certain degree of opacity might be necessary to protect the dignity and future prospects of candidates who were not ultimately selected.
He noted that transparency could still be achieved by putting forth reasons for the considerations without exposing the candidates to undue reputational harm.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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In India, it is common for those in power to not follow what they preach. Judges and politicians want everything to be transparent except their own institutions.