KATHMANDU: The Judicial Council headed by Chief Justice Min Bahadur Rayamajhi is considering appointment of judges in the three-tier judiciary as soon as time permits.

“We have been making final preparations to appoint the judges and hold the meeting of the council within a week,” Prem Bahadur Singh, Minister of Law and Justice told The Himalayan Times today.

The CJ, who is the ex-officio chairman of the JC, has failed to appoint the judges despite assuming the office. “There are many reasons why we were not able to appoint judges despite our prior commitment,” Singh said. One of the reasons Singh cited was that he was on a foreign trip.

Minister Singh added that

there are 38 posts lying vacant in the Appellate Courts, four in

District Courts and one in the Supreme Court. The Minister, who is also an ex-officio member of

the JC, also refuted charges labelled against him that he was smudged in a bribery case.

Recently, some weeklies had carried headlines alleging that Minister Singh was caught up in a scandal, something he outrightly rejected. “Newspapers enjoy freedom and can publish whatever they like,” he crackled a joke when asked to comment on those charges.

He also said that the appointment of the district judges had fallen through for want of a legal provision as per the Interim Constitution and that has been delaying the process of appointment. The constitution states that the appointment of district judges is to be made through an examination.

The newspapers alleged that the CJ had delayed the appointment process after the publication of the news that the Law Minister’s personal assistants had extracted money through illegal channels.