NEW DELHI: Anguished by the long delay in appointment of Bombay high court judge Justice Akil A Kureshi as chief justice of an HC, the Supreme Court on Monday said “interference in such matters affects the system of administration of justice” and does not “augur well for the institution”.The SC collegium of CJI Ranjan Gogoi and Justices S A Bobde and N V Ramana had recommended Justice Kureshi’s appointment as chief justice of Madhya Pradesh HC on May 10. Justice Kureshi was transferred to the Bombay HC from the Gujarat HC, where he was the senior-most judge.The Union government sat on the recommendation for over three months, forcing the Gujarat HC Advocates Association to file a writ petition alleging that the Centre was attempting to derail the collegium’s recommendation on Justice Kureshi.A bench of CJI Gogoi and Justices Bobde and S Abdul Nazeer admitted the petition and told solicitor general Tushar Mehta that the government should communicate to the SC, either on the judicial side or to the collegium on the administrative side, its views on the May 10 recommendation for Justice Kureshi’s appointment as MP HC CJ.After the SC entertained the petition on the judicial side, the department of justice got back to CJI Gogoi, through two communications on August 23 and August 27, with some material apparently arguing for Justice Kureshi to be appointed as CJ of a smaller HC.The collegium considered the material on September 5 and modified Justice Kureshi’s proposed destination as chief justice of the Tripura HC. Present Tripura CJ Sanjay Karol has been recommended to be appointed as CJ of Jharkhand HC. Though the collegium took the decision on September 5, the recommendation to appoint Justice Kureshi as CJ of Tripura was sent to the government after a good 16 days on September 21.On Monday, the CJI-led bench informed Gujarat HC Advocates Association’s counsel Arvind Datar that the fresh recommendation had been sent to the government on September 21. Datar’s request to keep the petition pending to watch further developments in the case was accepted by the SC. However, the bench hinted about its limited judicial review powers on matters relating to collegium’s recommendations for appointment and transfer of judges.The bench said, “At this stage, we would like to observe that matters of appointment, transfer and posting of judges go to the root of the system of administration of justice and, therefore, the power of judicial review has to be construed from the aforesaid standpoint.“We also would like to put on record that interference in such matters affects the system of administration of justice and, therefore, does not augur well for the institution. With the aforesaid observations, we direct the registry to list the matter for further consideration once the government acts on the proposal of the collegium.”