The Supreme Court Collegium recommended the name of Saurabh Kirpal. The collegium wants to appoint Saurabh as a judge of the Delhi High Court but the government has objection to Saurabh being gay. The government feels that he may be biased. Now Saurabh has questioned the objection of the government. The government has so far kept silence on the five names suggested by the collegium. One of them is the name of Advocate Saurabh Kirpal.

Speaking at an event at the Kolkata Literary Meet, Saurabh said, “It is an illusion to assume that a judge can be completely separated from his upbringing, social environment, his concepts, ideas etc. Saying that you have a particular ideology is why you are biased. This is not right. For this reason, the appointment of judges should not be stopped. Every judge will have some kind of perspective.

Speaking on the need for diversity on the bench, Saurabh said, “Currently the Indian judiciary is largely composed of upper caste and heterosexual judges… all of whom have a certain type of bias. When they interpret an ambiguous word in the Constitution, that particular word inevitably means something different to a person coming from a rich upper caste family and different to a Dalit or a woman.” Kripal also said here that the present form of society does not reflect the diversity of Indian society.

On the question of collegium system, Saurabh Kripal agreed that it is not the best system. There is a need for greater transparency and wider consultation. However, he also said that judges should always have primacy in the appointment of judges. He says, “Whatever new system you devise, it is necessary that the majority of the judges are retained in the appointment of judges.”