NEW DELHI: In a counterattack of sorts on the collegium system for appointing superior court judges, the government demanded to know from the Supreme Court if the process had any moorings in the Constitution. The system of checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution didn’t envisage the concept of primacy of the Chief Justice of India in the selection process or even an insulated judiciary, it argued.Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi ’s arguments came on Tuesday during a hearing on petitions challenging the legality of the Narendra Modi government’s twin laws bringing in a National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) to make judicial appointments. A Constitution bench comprising Justices JS Khehar, Jasti Chelameswar, Madan B Lokur, Kurian Joseph and Adarsh Kumar Goel is hearing the petitions.Rohatgi sought to question a 1993 ruling under which the collegium took charge of appointments to the exclusion of the executive, a change from the earlier system in which the executive had an equal say. Under the collegium system, the executive’s role was limited to carrying out a background check on judges and in the worse-case scenario, sending a name back to the collegium for reconsideration.But if the collegium reiterated the name, the government had no option but to clear the appointment.Rohatgi questioned the 1993 ruling as wrong. “There is no concept of collegium in the Constitution. Primacy of the CJI is not part of the basic structure of judicial independence,” he said. “The President can disagree with the CJI; he is entitled to consult but not abide.”Justice Khehar sought to know from him if the government, which had conceded during a presidential reference on the 1993 ruling that the system was right, could raise objections now. Rohatgi said the government couldn’t be stopped from airing its doubts about the ruling at any stage and that the matter should be referred to a nine-judge bench for adjudication.The bench, however, shrugged off his demand, instead asking him to explain whether the NJAC would ensure the independence of the judiciary.The AG said he would address this issue later, hammering at his theory that judicial independence was not intended to be watertight compartment without any interplay at all with the executive or the legislature. Rohatgi cited other provisions in the Constitution to show that its makers gave an equal share to the legislature or the executive in deciding a host of issues impinging on the judiciary, such as salary and service conditions.This prompted Justice Lokur to wonder if the government could exercising its hypothetical powers to enact a law reducing a judge’s salary to one rupee per year and whether it would not impinge on the judiciary’s independence.Rohatgi said the original system had worked fine from 1950 to 1973, unravelling only during Emergency (1973 to 1975). The collegium system, he said, was an aberration, a fallout of the Emergency. He said the 1993 ruling, which paved way for the switch to the collegium system, was antithetical to the constitutional scheme of things and the intent of the Constitution makers.