Union minister Kiren Rijiju has been divested of the law and justice portfolio and assigned that of the earth sciences ministry, Rashtrapati Bhavan said in a communique on Thursday. Arjun Ram Meghwal has been assigned the independent charge as minister of state in the ministry of law and justice in addition to his existing portfolios in place of Rijiju.
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Meghwal, who is from Rajasthan, is also of minister of state for parliamentary affairs and culture.
Kiren Rijiju has been in controversies for his remarks on the judiciary. Rijiju took an openly confrontational approach towards the judiciary. He repeatedly termed 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”.
Kiren Rijiju maintained there was no confrontation between the judiciary and the executive but also emphasised that judges cannot be appointed through judicial orders and that it has to be done by the government. Indeed, he stressed that judicial appointment is not a function of the judiciary and that its primary role is to decide cases.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court (SC) had refused to entertain a plea challenging the Bombay High Court order which had dismissed a petition against Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar and Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju over their remarks on the judiciary and the collegium system for appointment of judges. The plea came up for hearing before a bench of Justices S K Kaul and A Amanullah.
The bench said, “We believe that the high court view is correct. If any authority has made an inappropriate statement, the observations that the Supreme Court is broad enough to deal with the same is the correct view.”
The Bombay Lawyers Association (BLA) had approached the apex court challenging the high court’s February 9 order dismissing its plea on grounds that it was not a fit case to invoke the writ jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution.
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