01 Read
What happened
The Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice dispute traces to a missed government deadline. A December 2015 Supreme Court order directed the Government to finalise a Memorandum of Procedure for judicial appointments in consultation with the Chief Justice of India. Because that Memorandum was never finalised, ambiguity persisted over appointment protocols, eventually feeding the institutional dispute over who rightfully holds the Punjab and Haryana High Court's Chief Justice position.
02 Understand
Why it matters
The Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) is the administrative document that operationalises the collegium system of judicial appointments. Its legal foundations rest on the Second Judges Case (Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association v. Union of India, 1993) and the Third Judges Case (Presidential Reference, 1998), which together established that the CJI's primacy — and the collegium's collective opinion — binds the executive in matters of Supreme Court and High Court appointments and transfers.
After the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) was struck down in Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association v. Union of India (2015) — commonly called the Fourth Judges Case — a Constitution Bench directed in December 2015 that the existing MoP be revised collaboratively between the Government and the CJI. That revision was never completed.
The absence of a finalised MoP creates a procedural vacuum. When a High Court Chief Justice position falls vacant or becomes contested, there is no binding document to conclusively regulate how a name is recommended, how seniority and merit are weighed, or when government concurrence is due. This vacuum is precisely what the Punjab and Haryana dispute exposes: without a finalised MoP, both the collegium and the executive retain space to contest the legitimacy of any appointment or continuation in office.
For CLAT PG aspirants, this illustrates the difference between a constitutional right (judicial independence under Articles 124 and 217) and an administrative instrument (MoP) meant to operationalise it — and the consequences when the latter is incomplete.
After the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) was struck down in Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association v. Union of India (2015) — commonly called the Fourth Judges Case — a Constitution Bench directed in December 2015 that the existing MoP be revised collaboratively between the Government and the CJI. That revision was never completed.
The absence of a finalised MoP creates a procedural vacuum. When a High Court Chief Justice position falls vacant or becomes contested, there is no binding document to conclusively regulate how a name is recommended, how seniority and merit are weighed, or when government concurrence is due. This vacuum is precisely what the Punjab and Haryana dispute exposes: without a finalised MoP, both the collegium and the executive retain space to contest the legitimacy of any appointment or continuation in office.
For CLAT PG aspirants, this illustrates the difference between a constitutional right (judicial independence under Articles 124 and 217) and an administrative instrument (MoP) meant to operationalise it — and the consequences when the latter is incomplete.
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