NEW DELHI, JULY 26: When Chief Justice A S Anand pulled up former law minister Ram Jethmalani last week over the Thackeray affair, it wasn't the first time that the two were at loggerheads.In fact, barely a month ago, the Chief Justice had taken the unprecedented step of writing a letter to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee about how the ``settled convention'' for the Chief Justice to be consulted on the appointment of the Chairman of the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices (MRTP) Commission had been ignored by the Law Ministry.Justice Anand sent this letter two days after learning about the appointment of Justice Brij Mohan Lal as MRTP chairman and said that the departure from convention was not a ``desired or proper course.''The Chief Justice's confidential letter (DO No CJIS/SCI/MRTP/CHIA100), dated June 14, demanded that he be urgently informed about why the Law Ministry had made the departure from convention. ``Making appointment of the Chairman MRTP Commission without consultation of the Chief Justice of India is a serious matter which requires your kind attention,'' he wrote.Justice Anand annexed copies of correspondence previous Chief Justices had with then Law Ministers over the same subject. But this time, Justice Anand noted, the Registrar General of the Supreme Court simply received a letter from A Ramaswamy, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Law, on June 12, for ``ascertaining his convenience'' for administering the oath of office to the new chairman.The convention, Justice Anand said, was for the views of the Chief Justice to be taken much before the name of the appointee was sent to the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) or the Prime Minister. This, he notes, was the procedure followed while making the last appointment of Justice A N Divecha in 1996.The Chief Justice also cited rulings of the Supreme Court which laid down ground rules for the Chief Justice to be consulted on all appointments of Chairman and Vice-Chairman and Members.
