Delhi HC dismisses plea seeking to restrain SC collegium from recommending judges to higher judiciary

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has dismissed a plea seeking rehearing of a petition to restrain the Supreme Court collegium from recommending names for appointment to the higher judiciary. “Under the garb of a review petition, the appellant is actually seeking a rehearing of the appeal that was dismissed on merits, which is impermissible,” a bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Sangita Dhingra Sehgal said. Delhi-based lawyer R P Luthra had moved an application to review the 1 March order of the high court’s division bench rejecting the plea against its single judge’s order. [caption id=“attachment_3477668” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] The single judge had declined to stop the Supreme Court collegium from making any recommendation to appoint judges in higher judiciary. The petitioner moved an application seeking review of the decision, claiming that the previous division bench had not allowed him to argue his appeal against the single judge order. Disallowing the petitioner’s request, the bench observed that the purpose of a review application is fairly limited and it “cannot be used as a tool to re-argue an appeal, which has already been decided. The grounds taken in review application do not entitle the appellant to seek a review.” Luthra, while filing the appeal before the previous bench, had submitted that he was not arguing for removal of the judges who were already elevated to the apex court, but had claimed that the collegium system for recommending appointments to the higher judiciary was “unconstitutional”. The high court in May last year too had dismissed two similar pleas. One of them was filed by Luthra, which had sought to put a restraint on the government from acting on the collegium’s recommendation for elevating three high court chief justices and a senior lawyer to the apex court.