Former Supreme Court judge Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul has alleged that former Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud used to discuss names proposed for judicial appointments with the Union government before the Supreme Court Collegium formally deliberated on them — a practice Kaul described as seeking the government's "pre-approval".
The claim, made in an interview with journalist Karan Thapar for The Wire and drawn from Kaul's forthcoming memoir, Without Fear Or Favour, has reignited one of the most sensitive debates in Indian constitutional life: how much say the executive should have in choosing the country's judges.
Kaul, who retired in December 2023 as the second-most senior judge of the Supreme Court, recounted an incident from the Collegium's early work after he joined it in June 2022. The Collegium — the body of the five senior-most judges that selects candidates for the higher judiciary — had agreed on five names for appointment to the Supreme Court when, on the way to the meeting, Chandrachud proposed a sixth name at the last minute. The other judges resisted the addition.
Kaul said he suspected the sixth name had been proposed at the government's instance.
Chandrachud then took Kaul aside during the meeting and wondered aloud whether he should telephone the government to ascertain its views on the proposed appointments. Kaul said he told the then Chief Justice that such a step should not be taken while the Collegium was deliberating. "My suspicions were confirmed, and I told him to see sense: He could not, in the middle of a collegium, do such a thing," Kaul wrote in his memoir, according to reports of its contents.
The five names went through; the sixth did not.
The distinction Kaul draws is central to his objection. Consulting the government after the Collegium has reached a decision is an established part of the appointments process: under the memorandum of procedure, the government's views are sought and the Collegium can reiterate names if the government objects.
Seeking the government's approval before the Collegium has deliberated, Kaul argued, is a different matter altogether — it risks turning an independent judicial choice into one pre-cleared by the executive.
"This has become unfortunately a practice of names being discussed, and some kind of previous discussion with the Government. That used to happen. It has been happening, I think, before [CJI Chandrachud] and after. That is why it troubles me," Kaul said in the interview.
He warned that such a practice could become an expectation for future Chief Justices, particularly those with shorter tenures who might find it harder to resist a precedent set by a longer-serving predecessor.
Kaul also described Chandrachud as "too deferential" to the government on administrative matters relating to judicial appointments, while praising his intellectual ability and work on the judicial side. The contrast is deliberate: Kaul separates the former Chief Justice's record as a judge — which he admires — from his handling of the institution's relationship with the executive, which he regards as excessively accommodating.
In the memoir, Kaul wrote that he had suggested to Chandrachud that the two of them "face the government together", since he, not being Chief Justice, could afford to be the firmer of the two. "Dhananjay [Chandrachud], with a few exceptions, preferred to handle that relationship all on his own," Kaul wrote.
The memoir, published by Juggernaut and scheduled for release later this month, has already generated headlines before publication, with The Indian Express having reviewed the unpublished manuscript. Among its other revelations, Kaul wrote that the government had raised what he called a "bizarre" query about the caste of a judge candidate from a minority faith, and that tension between him and Chandrachud peaked over such issues.
He also revealed that Chandrachud had taken the judges' appointment matter away from his bench and advised him to take a "middle path" in the reconsideration of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) judgment.
The allegations land in a long-running institutional contest. The Collegium system itself was created by Supreme Court judgments in the 1990s, which wrested the primacy in appointments from the executive after decades in which the government had the final word. Parliament's attempt to replace it with a National Judicial Appointments Commission in 2014 was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2015 as unconstitutional, restoring the Collegium.
Since then, the friction has taken a different form: delays in clearing Collegium recommendations, the segregation of names from a batch, and repeated public exchanges between the government and the judiciary over who holds the real power in appointments.
Successive governments have argued that the executive, as an elected branch, deserves a meaningful voice, and that the Collegium's opacity is itself a democratic problem. Successive Chief Justices have countered that judicial independence requires the judiciary to have the final say, and that government delays effectively amount to a veto.
Kaul's account adds a new and uncomfortable dimension to that debate: the suggestion that the line between consultation and pre-clearance was blurred not by government pressure alone, but from within the Collegium itself.
The timing of the revelations matters too. The memoir's account of the five-names episode dates to the period shortly after Kaul joined the Collegium in mid-2022, when the body was filling six vacancies on the Supreme Court. Chandrachud went on to serve as Chief Justice for two years, until November 2024, a tenure that included both landmark judgments and sustained public debate about the court's relationship with the government.
Kaul's portrait of a Chief Justice who was "too deferential" on appointments sits alongside his praise for Chandrachud's judicial work — a combination that makes the criticism harder to dismiss as partisan.
Legal circles will also note what Kaul does not claim. He does not say that the government dictated any appointment, nor does he establish that the government's views were in fact sought in advance on the names in question — his account is that Chandrachud considered telephoning the government, and that he, Kaul, opposed it. The charge, in other words, is about a practice and a mindset rather than a proven quid pro quo.
That nuance matters for how the allegation should be weighed: it raises a question about institutional culture, not a finding of corruption.
Even so, the implications Kaul draws are far-reaching. If pre-deliberation discussions with the government become routine, he argues, the Collegium's independence is compromised in substance even while its formal primacy survives. A Chief Justice with a two-year tenure who normalises the practice, he warned, leaves successors with shorter tenures little room to push back.
The argument echoes a broader concern in constitutional scholarship: that informal practices, more than formal rules, often determine where power really lies.
The government has not publicly responded to the specific allegations in detail, and Chandrachud himself has not issued a detailed rebuttal to the memoir's claims. In the absence of a response, the debate will likely play out in legal commentary and in Parliament, where the appointments question never fully leaves the agenda.
What is already clear is that Kaul's memoir has ensured the Collegium's inner workings — usually shielded by convention and confidentiality — will be discussed in public with unusual candour.
For the judiciary, the episode is a reminder of the tension at the heart of the appointments system: independence requires insulation from the executive, but the system also depends on a working relationship with the government of the day. Kaul's answer to that tension is procedural and principled — consult after deciding, never before.
Whether that principle is adopted as a norm, or remains one retired judge's dissent, will shape how the next generation of judges reaches the bench.
(Reporting based on Live Law, The Indian Express and Scroll.)