Justice Ujjal Bhuyan of the Supreme Court criticised the opaqueness of the Supreme Court Collegium system. He stated that by not disclosing the reasons for appointments, the Collegium was doing a disservice to the judiciary.

He said: "By not giving reasons, you are actually doing a disservice to judges who have done tremendous work. By not doing this, we are allowing some kind of people who come inside the judiciary who will later go on to describe a group of people as 'ants' this and that. It's completely unconstitutional. To prevent entry of such people, there should be some discussion; there should be some reasons given. What harm is caused by disclosing reasons ..."

Justice Bhuyan made these remarks in reference to a High Court judge who had created a controversy with his comments allegedly targeting a community.

Justice Bhuyan was speaking at the launch of the report titled 'The Judicial Transparency Index: Assessing Disclosure of Information by the Supreme Court and the High Courts,' by Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy's Justice, Access & Lowering Delays in India(JALDI).

Along with Bhuyan, Senior Advocate Saurabh Kirpal and Aditya Sondhi were also a part of the panel discussion. While Kirpal said that disclosing reasons ensures that there is no arbitrariness and capriciousness, Justice Bhuyan added that disclosing reasons does not harm because it allows the public to be informed.

Kirpal added that the Supreme Court of the United States may openly show political inclination, but it goes through a public scrutiny which the Indian Collegium doesn't allow.

He said: "Have you seen what those judges go through in Senate hearings? Every question, every aspect of their life is laid bare, split up threadbare. I dare say that this, the US Supreme Court judges may be ideological or biased. The one thing you cannot say is they have evaded scrutiny or the very people on whose lives they're going to end up ruling and making consequential decisions about them."

Justice Bhuyan recommended the JALDI team to look into the aspect of opacity of the collegium system.

"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."

He stated that he has 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 the same reason.

He remarked: "This is what we may call the reflexive gap: a judiciary that has embraced publicity in its adjudicative function has been markedly more cautious about extending the same principle to its own constitutive processes."

ustice Bhuyan particularly pointed to a shift in the contents of recent collegium resolutions.

"I have noticed that the last three collegium resolutions of the Supreme Court, including the latest one in 2025, do not contain any reasons at all for recommending elevations. This is in contrast to the earlier resolutions, where every recommendation was supported by some reasons," he said.

While acknowledging that the earlier reasons were not always exhaustive and could at times appear "formulaic or copy-paste in nature," he said they nevertheless offered some justification for the recommendations.

"They may not have been exhaustive. Some may even say they were somewhat formulaic or copy-paste in nature. But at least some reasons were given to justify the recommendations," he remarked.

Questioning the departure from that practice, Justice Bhuyan asked, "Is this a step back from the principle of transparency? These are important issues."

Stressing the public's right to know, Justice Bhuyan said citizens are entitled to information about the judiciary, including the judges who man constitutional courts and their work.

"Citizens, as we have seen, right from Plato to Bentham, have a right to know what is happening in the courts. They have a right to know who their judges are. They have a right to know what kind of judgments a judge has delivered. All this should be in the public domain," he said.

Justice Bhuyan recalled that some earlier collegium resolutions were considerably more detailed. Referring to a resolution issued during the tenure of former Chief Justice UU Lalit, he said it contained well-reasoned justifications for the recommendations.

He also cited the Supreme Court Collegium's resolution dated January 18, 2023, reiterating the recommendation for the appointment of senior advocate Saurabh Kirpal as a judge of the Delhi High Court.

"I would say the reasons given by the Supreme Court are quite convincing. At least, I am convinced by the reasoning," Justice Bhuyan observed.

He, however, noted that despite the reiteration, the recommendation has remained pending for over three years.

"It is another matter that three and a half years have gone by and nothing has happened thereafter. But that is a different debate and not part of today's conversation. We can have that discussion some other time," he said.

Ending his address on a lighter note, Justice Bhuyan remarked that while there has been discussion on introducing a cooling-off period for judges after retirement, perhaps one was also needed after delivering public lectures.

"I believe that, just as there should be a cooling off period after retirement, perhaps there should also be a cooling off period after delivering one of these speeches," he quipped.