Appointing new judges to the high courts is a time-consuming process because the chief justice invites senior counsels, who appear frequently before the court, to accept judgeship. The names are generally put forward by the two seniormost judges of the high court, who are supposed to be well versed with the affairs of that high court. The chief justice, who is normally from outside the state, may not be as familiar with these senior advocates as his two senior colleagues.

The names are then forwarded to the chief minister and the governor, while the Intelligence Bureau is supposed to do a confidential background check so that their report is forwarded to the governor of the state, who then forwards the file of the putative judge to the Chief Justice of India (CJI).

The CJI consults his two senior judges to elicit their views on how suitable the putative judge will be. When Justice Jasti Chelameshwar was the senior judge of the Supreme Court, he said the collegium proceedings were held behind closed doors. At that time, some collegium members would allegedly lobby for their candidate as trade-offs. The proceedings of the collegium were opaque.

After the collegium evaluates the dossier of the putative high court judge, they seek the opinion of a judge who is well-versed in the affairs of that high court. He is called a ‘consultee judge.’ After that, the dossiers are forwarded to the Union Ministry for Law, Justice and Company Affairs.........

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