New Delhi: A plea seeking setting up of a “public body”, independent of the executive and judiciary, to ensure fair appointment of judges in High Courts and the Supreme Court and check nepotism, has been filed in the apex court. The PIL, filed by National Lawyers’ Campaign for Judicial Transparency and Reforms and its office bearers, is likely to come up for hearing next week. Claiming that the “common deserving lawyers” are usually not considered for appointment of Judges in the higher judiciary, the plea alleged that those close to the judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts or politicians or big industrial houses only got chosen as judges. “In the eyes of the Petitioners, what is paramount is a system of appointment of Judges independent of both the executive and the judiciary,” it said. The plea, filed by lawyers including A C Philip and Mathews J Nedumpara, said the mechanism of appointment of judges, independent of the executive and the judiciary, was ‘killed’ even before it was allowed to take birth by the judgment in the NJAC case.-PTI