The central government does not maintain any record of cases where judges and chief justices were superseded in their elevation to the supreme court or as chief justices of high courts.

This has been revealed by the Ministry of Law and Justice in response to an RTI application filed by Delhi resident Subhash Candra Agrawal.

In his RTI application to the President’s secretariat filed in December 2009, Agrawal had sought these details and other information like the name of judges whose files were at least once returned by the president for being elevated to the apex court. 

The President secretariat transferred his application to the Ministry of Law and Justice which, in its reply, dated February 2, 2010, said that “no such list maintained by the department and therefore, no information can be furnished.”

Agrawal is surprised by the reply. “A lot of such cases are reported by the media. This is something that the media and members of the bar council must be having. But interestingly, our Union government does not find necessary to preserve this data”, said he.

“In November 2009, Jurist Fali S Nariman delivered a speech at the National Law Universit, Delhi. He mentioned the case of Justice AK Patnaik who was superseded three times before being finally elevated to apex court but only after retirement of a particular collegium-member”, he added.

Agrawal has filed first appeal with the President’s Secetariat.