CJI Gavai Defends Collegium System, Says 'No System Is Foolproof'
Justice Gavai said the collegium has a better understanding of lawyers who appear before them and of judges rising from the district judiciary.
By Sumit Saxena
Published : November 23, 2025 at 5:55 PM IST
New Delhi: Chief Justice of India B R Gavai, on the last day of his tenure on Sunday, broke his silence on the dissent raised by Justice B V Nagarathna in the Supreme Court collegium over the proposal to elevate Justice Vipul Pancholi to the Supreme Court, saying, "If it had any merit, then four judges would not have agreed on that name."
In August this year, the Supreme Court collegium had recommended the elevation of Bombay High Court Chief Justice Alok Aradhe and Patna High Court Chief Justice Vipul M. Pancholi to the apex court.
Justice Nagarathna had recorded a strong note of dissent against Justice Pancholi’s appointment, stressing that his elevation would not only be “counter-productive” to the administration of justice but would also undermine the credibility of the collegium system.
The five-member collegium, led by CJI Gavai and comprising Justices Surya Kant, Vikram Nath, J. K. Maheshwari, and Nagarathna, took the decision with a 4:1 split on Justice Pancholi’s name.
When ETV Bharat asked whether the dissent had any merit from his perspective, Justice Gavai, during an interaction with the media at his residence, replied, "If it had any merit, then four judges would not have agreed on that name." He noted that dissent within the collegium is not unprecedented.
Responding to another question from ETV Bharat on whether including the government in the judges’ appointment process would make it difficult to identify good judges, Justice Gavai said the collegium, both at the High Court and Supreme Court levels, has a better understanding of lawyers who appear before them and of judges rising from the district judiciary. "When we recommended the names of lawyers practising in the Supreme Court, we sent them to the Chief Justice of the concerned High Court and its collegium members. Since those lawyers had appeared before those judges, only after the collegium was satisfied with their performance were their names recommended," he added.
When ETV Bharat asked whether good judges can only be found by the collegium, Justice Gavai replied, "No system is foolproof. But I believe that, in the present case, the High Court collegium and the Supreme Court collegium are better suited to select judges than the executive. Lawyers do not argue before the Prime Minister or the Law Minister, so how would they gauge the performance of a candidate?"
ETV Bharat then asked how many of the 93 names recommended by the collegium had been appointed by the government. Justice Gavai said, "I think during my tenure, barring one or two, all the names were cleared by the government. A total of 107 judges were appointed to the High Courts during my tenure, including some names that had been withheld for the past one or two years. Twenty-four judges were appointed to the Allahabad High Court, 14 to the Bombay High Court, and around 12 to the Madhya Pradesh High Court."
On the recent opinion of the apex court in the Presidential Reference matter, where the court refrained from defining a reasonable period for governors to decide on a bill, Justice Gavai said, "We relaxed the timelines and balanced it by stating that the governor cannot sit on a bill indefinitely. The judiciary, through legislative interpretation, cannot read into the Constitution something that is not there."
"You cannot have a straitjacket formula that if every bill is not passed within one month, it will be deemed to have been passed. That would amount to encroachment on the powers vested in the governor by the Constitution," he added.
When a reporter referred to the view expressed by Justice Gavai’s predecessors that there should be a ‘friendly friction’ between the judiciary and the government, he responded, "I do not think friction is necessary. At times, there will be friction, but I do not think there should be continuous friction."
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