Supreme Court judge, Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, stated on Saturday (August 1, 2026) that the SC Collegium’s lack of transparency in judicial appointments creates a loophole, allowing individuals who make unconstitutional or derogatory remarks to enter the judiciary.
Justice Bhuyan pointed to a former Allahabad High Court judge’s reported reference to a minority community as ‘ants’ in a speech he had made while serving on the Bench as an example.
The Supreme Court said that by not providing reasons for its recommendations to constitutional courts, the Collegium, on the other hand, was also keeping the public in the dark about the achievements of some deserving candidates.
Justice Bhuyan, who was delivering the keynote address at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy’s launch of its report ‘The Judicial Transparency Index: Assessing Disclosure of Information by the Supreme Court and the High Courts’, said the return to opacity by the Collegium has been a relatively recent phenomenon.
“Deliberations over the elevation and transfer of judges remain confidential; reasons for rejecting or deferring a recommendation are rarely disclosed in full; and the criteria applied are not codified in any publicly accessible instrument comparable to the Memorandum of Procedure’s own limited disclosure. I have seen that the last three statements of the Supreme Court Collegium do not contain any reason at all for recommending elevation as opposed to the earlier statements where each of the recommendations was supported by some reason,” Justice Bhuyan said.
Justice Bhuyan said a July 24 order passed by a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant has drawn a fine, clear line between transparency through livestreaming of court proceedings and preventing misuse and commercial exploitation of that process.
“The court’s concern is that decontextualised fragments of oral exchanges, observations made by judges in the course of argument, not findings, are being circulated with sensational captions, causing reputational harm to judges, advocates, and litigants alike, and distorting public understanding of what had actually happened in court. The order does not retreat from live streaming; it draws a distinction between transparency of the process and the licence to manufacture a misleading narrative from that process,” the Supreme Court judge explained.
Addressing apprehensions whether the abuse of livestreamed content may prompt the court to do away with the facility, Justice Bhuyan said the livestreaming of court proceedings has been the “most visible transparency development of the last decade”. The judge underscored that the principle of open justice was quintessential for the Indian judiciary to retain public faith in it.
“Open courts effectively foster public confidence. The court of justice is a public forum. Open courts make it possible for the public to develop reasonable perceptions about the judiciary… Allowing the litigants and members of the public to view courtroom proceedings, ensures that judges apply the law in a fair and impartial manner,” Justice Bhuyan said.
The judge referred to the 2018 Swapnil Tripathi judgment of the Supreme Court, which had held that livestreaming expanded the courtroom beyond its physical four walls and epitomised transparency, good governance and accountability.
Justice Bhuyan quoted the Supreme Court’s own words in Central Public Information Officer, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal judgment of 2020 that “judicial independence is not secured by the secrecy of cloistered halls. It cannot be said that increase in transparency would threaten judicial independence”
Public access to justice and transparency is the “very soul of justice”, he said, adding, “It is the keenest spur to exertion and the surest of all guards against improbity”.
Published – August 01, 2026 04:43 pm IST
