Collegium reasons go missing. Judges notice.
Justice Ujjal Bhuyan reportedly asked why recent collegium appointment notes say who, not why. The Court’s own PDFs back the first half of that sentence.
The collegium’s recent appointment notes list names, while the reasons remain absent.
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A sitting Supreme Court judge has, reportedly, asked the obvious: why are recent collegium appointment statements listing names without reasons. Justice Ujjal Bhuyan is quoted at a Vidhi JALDI panel in New Delhi on August 1 saying the “last three collegium resolutions contain no reasons whatsoever” and asking if that is a step back on transparency. He also argued that opacity does a disservice to strong candidates and leaves room for unsuitable ones. These quotations are from a PTI report carried by a Telangana daily; a recording or transcript was not immediately available to check the exact words.
The narrow, checkable part is on the Court’s own website. The June 2, 2026 collegium note on six Karnataka High Court appointments lists names and nothing else. The May 18, 2026 Madras High Court note adds proposal dates, not reasons. The Court’s May 2025 press release about adding process data (bar/service, category, relations) is not the same thing as setting out why someone was chosen.
For Telangana, this is not an abstract Delhi ritual. High Court benches that decide service, land and criminal matters in the state are stocked through this pipeline. When the reasoning is reduced to a roll call, accountability travels with it — which suits the BJP-led Centre that wants control without fingerprints and a Congress that will happily inherit the same opacity. The TDP’s contribution to judicial reform remains where its Telangana promises are: on paper.
Two things remain to be seen: which exact three resolutions Justice Bhuyan meant, and whether the collegium explains the recent shift. The Court hasn’t bothered to say so far. The PDFs, at least, are crystal clear.