The convention against recommendations from an Acting Chief Justice is practical rather than legal. Recommending a High Court judge requires knowing the Bar, consulting colleagues on the bench and forming a considered view of a candidate's competence and conduct; an acting tenure of a few weeks does not allow it. Where such names have nonetheless been sent, the Collegium has decided case by case. In the Bombay High Court instance in 2020, a judge who served as Acting Chief Justice from 20 February to 19 March 2020 and then as Chief Justice until his retirement on 27 April 2020 prepared a list of 22 names. Two consultee judges objected in writing that no Chief Justice could properly vet 22 candidates in so short a period and asked that the list return to the sitting Chief Justice; a third disagreed, pointing out that the recommending judge had been on that High Court since 2004 and knew its Bar well. The Collegium relied on the affirmative response and forwarded 18 of the 22 names, and the Centre returned them citing the recorded reservations, after which fresh lists were drawn up. In a 2022 Rajasthan instance the Centre objected to at least 12 names sent at the fag end of the then Chief Justice's tenure; the Collegium asked whether there were specific objections based on intelligence inputs, received no answer, and the Centre eventually cleared 8 of the 12.

The Rajasthan case is awkward precisely because the usual justification for the convention does not fit: an acting tenure of almost a year is not the brief stint the rule was written for, and the judge concerned has served on that High Court long enough to know its Bar. That inverts the argument. If a long acting tenure makes the recommendations more credible, it also makes the underlying failure more serious, since a High Court has gone without a regular Chief Justice for a year while the Collegium and the government did not complete an appointment. The episode therefore points at two recurring criticisms of the Collegium system at once: that it has no written, published procedure for situations like this, so outcomes look ad hoc; and that appointments and transfers stall between the judiciary and the executive without either side being accountable for the delay. The CJI's response, that allegations go through the institutional mechanism and are not findings, is the standard and correct position, but it also illustrates the problem, since the institutional mechanism for complaints against judges is the in-house procedure, which is itself unwritten in statute.