CPN lawmaker Barshaman Pun on Friday said career judges should be given priority in judicial appointments, stressing that judges with long experience in the judicial service should be appointed to the Supreme Court. Pun made the remarks during a meeting of the parliamentary hearing committee while questioning Chandra Bahadur Saru, who has been proposed for appointment as a justice of the Supreme Court. The lawmaker also cautioned that past irregularities must not be repeated when benches are formed on the basis of subject expertise, linking the question of who reaches the apex court to how the court organizes its work once justices take their seats.

Pun's case for career judges

Pun's central argument before the committee was that the Supreme Court should draw its justices primarily from within the judicial service. In his view, priority in judicial appointments belongs to career judges, and it is judges with long experience in the judicial service who should be elevated to the apex court. The position places sustained service on the bench at the centre of appointment decisions, an emphasis the lawmaker delivered while the committee examined the credentials of a proposed justice.

Career judges, in the sense invoked at the hearing, are judges who have built their professional lives inside the judicial service itself, moving through the country's courts over the course of their careers. Pun's remarks suggested that this reservoir of courtroom experience should be the first pool consulted whenever a seat opens on the Supreme Court, rather than a consideration of secondary importance. His comments position seniority within the judiciary as the yardstick against which candidates for the apex court should be measured.

The key points Pun placed before the committee were:

  • Career judges should be given priority in judicial appointments.
  • Judges with long experience in the judicial service should be appointed to the Supreme Court.
  • Past irregularities must not be repeated when benches are formed on the basis of subject expertise.

Warning on past irregularities and bench formation

Alongside his comments on career judges, Pun addressed the composition of benches at the Supreme Court. He said that when benches are formed on the basis of subject expertise, past irregularities must not be repeated. The remark ties the practice of organizing benches around specialized subject areas to irregularities of the past, presenting it as a lesson the court should carry into its future arrangements rather than set aside.

Benches determine which judges hear which cases, and at the Supreme Court that arrangement shapes how the country's most consequential legal questions are handled. It is against this backdrop that Pun's caution about repeating past irregularities in the formation of benches on the basis of subject expertise should be read. By raising the issue during the hearing, he indicated that he views bench formation as directly relevant to the committee's scrutiny of judicial appointments, not as a separate administrative matter.

The warning also gains weight from the setting in which it was delivered. Hearings for proposed justices are precisely where lawmakers weigh the standards that should govern the judiciary, and Pun used that platform to make clear that the record of past irregularities should inform how benches are constituted going forward.

Questioning of proposed justice Saru

Pun's remarks came while the committee was questioning Chandra Bahadur Saru, the proposed justice of the Supreme Court. Saru's name was before the panel as the proposed appointee to the apex court, and Friday's meeting gave lawmakers the opportunity to put questions to him directly. Pun's line of questioning became the vehicle for his broader arguments about who should serve as a justice and how the court's benches should be formed.

Hearings before the parliamentary hearing committee are the stage at which nominees for senior judicial positions face lawmakers before appointments proceed. Pun's intervention at Friday's meeting illustrates that the process is used not only to examine an individual nominee but also to press principles of judicial appointment, with seniority within the judicial service at the centre of his expectations. His remarks at the hearing were reported by Thaha Khabar.

The exchange underscored the dual role such hearings play: assessing the person proposed for the bench while also surfacing the expectations lawmakers hold for the institution that person is set to join. For Pun, both threads converged on the same concern, that experience earned within the judicial service be treated as the decisive qualification for the Supreme Court.

Experience at the heart of appointments

Throughout his contribution to the hearing, Pun returned to the same measure: the depth of a judge's experience in the judicial service. His position, stated plainly, is that career judges should be first in line for the Supreme Court and that the irregularities of the past should serve as a warning rather than a template as benches are formed on the basis of subject expertise.

As the committee examines the proposed appointment of Chandra Bahadur Saru, Pun's remarks on Friday have placed both questions, who is appointed and how the court's benches are organized, at the centre of its deliberations. His message to the hearing was unambiguous: judges with long experience in the judicial service should be appointed to the Supreme Court, and the mistakes of the past must not be repeated in the process.