The Attorney General submitted that he had examined the concerned file himself and found no irregularities in the appointment.
Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for the petitioner, then pointed out that Goel was due to retire on Saturday.
The AG then responded saying,
“We are not in a mini-trial here.”
After the AG assured the Bench that the needful was done by the Central government even though the appointment was on very short notice, Justice Joseph remarked,
“…we are telling you this is not adversarial. We are trying to find out, being mindful that there is a system in place…How were the four names [including that of Goel, in the shortlist] zeroed in on?”
The AG responded that the average tenures the existing pool of eligible civil servants would have as Election Commissioners was used to narrow down the names.
On at least three more occasions during the course of the hearing, the judges asked the AG as to the mechanism behind short-listing the four and how Goel was chosen from among them.
“Attorney General, kindly enlighten us as to how the Law Minister picks up these four names? How were the four chosen?” Justice Joseph asked.
Justice Rastogi said,
“We are asking you to place before us the mechanism of filtering down these four names…Mr Attorney, you are keeping away the answer. You are trying to justify the selections.”
Source: Barandbench
