Criticism of Collegium opacity is not new, but it carries different weight coming from a sitting Supreme Court judge, and the specific complaint is narrower and harder to dismiss than the general one. Justice Bhuyan is not arguing for the executive to regain a role, which is what the NJAC attempted and the Court rejected in 2015 as a violation of judicial independence. He is arguing that a system defended on the ground that judges are best placed to assess judicial merit should be willing to state what that assessment was. The distinction matters because the transparency objection cuts across the appointments debate: it can be met without altering who decides, simply by recording reasons. The counter-argument, usually made in defence of confidentiality, is that publishing reasons for rejecting or deferring a candidate would damage the reputations of sitting High Court judges who were considered and passed over. That tension between institutional accountability and individual privacy is the heart of the issue and the frame worth using in an answer.