new delhi after quashing the national judicial appointments commission njac and reviving the collegium system the supreme court on tuesday said the appointment of new judges will remain on hold until it works out what needs to be done to reform the scheme for appointing judges which has been widely criticized for lacking transparency a fivejudge bench comprising justices js khehar j chelameswar madan b lokur kurian joseph and adarsh kumar goel said everything on judges appointment process is stalled for a long time it is essential for the collegium to start functioning so we must decide at the earliest what should be the contours of reforms something must emerge quickly it is a very difficult task read also secrecy key to collegium meetings almost 400 posts of judges are lying vacant from a total sanctioned strength of 1017 judges with fresh recommendations from the collegium getting stalled till the fivejudge bench decides the reforms it will be a challenging task for justice t s thakur who will take over as cji on december 2 to fill vacancies the bench heard preliminary submissions from attorney general mukul rohatgi solicitor general ranjit kumar and senior advocates fali s nariman k k venugopal anil divan rajeev dhavan t r andhyarujina gopal subramaniam and arvind datar transparency emerged as the key point during deliberations which the bench said would commence from thursday other issues to be debated are eligibility criteria for a person to considered by the collegium for appointment as judge mechanism to handle complaints that the collegium receives against a person in consideration and the need for setting up a permanent secretariat for the collegium read alsocollegium would have collapsed if we had gone to the press on dinakaran case the issue of transparency generated an interesting exchange between rohatgi and justice khehar and saw many advocates pressing for openness and clarity on how judges of the supreme court and high courts are appointed with the ag arguing that that collegium must attach specific reasons for selecting or rejecting a candidate as a judge justice khehar said your the governments njac did not say so the njac is history now the ag said leading justice khehar to remark one of the guiding features for the reforms is the objective of the njac transparency as the bench was hearing only a few leading lawyers many unsung advocates tried to make their voices heard in the din a voice rang high collegium system has lost public trust because of its secrecy opaqueness and nepotism let us begin by working towards regaining that trust for that we need to invite suggestions from the general public rather than hear views of eminent advocates who have a vested interest in the system the cacophony ebbed but no one commented on this statement read alsopity those who become hc judge at young age justice khehar number four in the seniority list and part of the collegium said he was not participating in the collegium headed by cji