DRAFT CONSTITUTION 655
temporary or additional judges, and those clauses which referred to temporary or additional judges have been eliminated from Constitution. All judges of the High Court shall have to be permanent. It seems to me that if you are not going to have any temporary or additional judges you must make some kind of provision for the disposal of certain business, for which it may not be feasible to appoint a temporary judge in time to discharge the duties of a High Court Judge with respect to such matters. And therefore the only other provision which would be compatible with article 196 (which requires that no judge after retirement shall practise) is the provision which is contained in article 200. As my Friend Dr. Tek Chand said, there seems to be a lot of misgiving or misunderstanding with regard to the purpose or the intention of the article. It is certainly not the intention of the article to import by the back door for any length of time persons who have retired from the High Courts. Therefore nobody need have any misgiving with regard to this.
The other question that has been asked of me is with regard to the proviso. Many people who have spoken on the proviso have said that it appeared to them to be purposeless and meaningless. I do not agree with them. I do think that the proviso is absolutely necessary. If the proviso is not there it would be quite open for the authorities concerned to impose a sort of penalty upon a judge who refuses to accept the invitation. It may also happen that a person who refuses to accept the invitation may be held up for contempt of Court. We do not want such penalties to be created against a retired High Court Judge who either for the reason that he is ill, incapacitated or because he is otherwise engaged in his private business does not think it possible to accept the invitation extended to him by the Chief Justice. That is the justification for the proviso. The other question that has been asked is whether the word ‘privilege’ in article 200 will entitle a retired judge to demand the full salary which a judge of the High Court would be entitled to get. My reply to that is that this is a matter which will be governed by rules with regard to pension. The existing rule is that when a retired person is invited to accept any particular job under Government he gets the salary of the post minus the pension. I believe that is the general rule. I may be mistaken. Anyhow, that is a matter which is governed by the Pension Rules. Similarly this matter may be left to be governed by the rules regarding pension and we need not specifically say anything about it with regard to this matter in the article itself. This is all I have to say with regard to the points of criticism that have been raised in the course of the debate.