Rashtrapati Bhavan announced on Thursday that Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju has been relieved of the law and justice portfolio and assigned to the Ministry of earth sciences. Arjun Ram Meghwal, in place of Kiren Rijiju has been given the independent charge of minister of state in the Ministry of Law and Justice, in addition to his existing portfolios.
Meghwal , who is from the poll-bound state of Rajasthan, is also the state minister for parliamentary affairs and culture. He is a former bureaucrat and the BJP’s prominent Scheduled Caste face in Congress-ruled Rajasthan, where elections are scheduled for later this year. He is a three-term Member of Parliament from Bikaner who is well-known for his environmental advocacy. He’s frequently seen cycling to Parliament.
SP Singh Baghel, Minister of State for Law and Justice, has been transferred to the Ministry of Health. Baghel, an Agra legislator, previously served in the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party before joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The changes occurred in the context of Kiren Rijiju ‘s openly confrontational approach to the judiciary. He called the collegium system of appointing judges “opaque,” “alien to the Constitution,” and the “only system in the world where judges appoint people known to them” on numerous occasions.
Kiren Rijiju maintained that there was no conflict between the judiciary and the executive, but he also stated that judges could not be appointed through judicial orders, but rather by the government.
He emphasized that judicial appointments are not a function of the judiciary, whose primary function is to decide cases.
While his remarks received widespread attention, it is unclear whether they served any practical purpose. To be sure, it’s unclear whether his strategy had anything to do with the shift in his portfolio.
Surprisingly, the Supreme Court and Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud have refused to enter the fray.
According to an unnamed ruling BJP leader, Kiren Rijiju ‘s transfer could be explained by the government’s standoff with the judiciary over a variety of issues, including the collegium system for appointing judges.
The Supreme Court refused to hear a petition seeking action against Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar and Kiren Rijiju for their divisive remarks about the judiciary and the collegium system on Monday.
The Supreme Court was hearing an appeal filed by the Bombay Lawyers Association (BLA) against a high court order in Bombay. The lawyers’ body claimed in its petition to the high court that Rijiju and Dhankhar disqualified themselves from holding constitutional posts by demonstrating a lack of faith in the Constitution through their public conduct and utterances against the Supreme Court and the collegium.
The Association cited a slew of statements made by Rijiju and Dhankhar over the last year, highlighting an ongoing clash between the executive and the judiciary over the mechanism for selecting judges and the division of powers between the two.
Dhankhar has also called the collegium system into question. The Supreme Court responded by reminding the government that the collegium system is the law of the land and must be followed “to a T” by the government.
