WASHINGTON: Vice President Joe Biden today indicated of a centrist pick to fill up a key vacancy in the US Supreme Court for which three Indian-Americans could be the possible candidates.
“There are a whole hell of a lot of people who Republicans have already voted for, who fall into that category, and also people they haven’t voted for yet,” Biden was quoted as saying by Politico in a joint interview along with The Washington Post.
He refused to discuss specific names like that of Indian-American Sri Srinivasan, who was confirmed as a Washington DC judge with an overwhelming 97-0 votes by the Senate and is considered among the top favorites for the post.
Biden, according to Politico, said he hasn’t met with President Barack Obama to discuss the nomination yet, but he confirmed that there are plenty of available candidates without reputations as liberal advocates.
“This is a potential gigantic game-changer. My advice is, the only way we get someone on the Court now or even later is to do what we have done in the past,” Biden said.
“That’s how we got Justice Kennedy. He wasn’t a conservative’s conservative. He turned out to be exactly who he was. That’s how we got Souter, too. It was a critical moment in the balance of the court,” he noted.
“So the president has to pick someone who is intellectually competent, a person of high moral character, someone who has demonstrated they have an open mind, someone who doesn’t come with a specific agenda,” Biden said in response to a question.
Srinivasan, 48, tops the list of prospective justice to the highest judicial body as Obama said he plans to fulfill his “constitutional responsibilities to nominate a successor” after Justice Antonin Scalia’s sudden death last week.
Srinivasan, whose mother is from Chennai and father was from Tirunelveli, is considered to have a bipartisan support in the Congress and is popular among both Democrats and Republican lawmakers.
His parents had migrated to the US in the 1960s.
Besides, two other Indian-Americans also figure in the list of prospective candidates for the coveted post ahead of the crucial US presidential elections.
Neal Katyal, 45, who served as Acting Solicitor General of the US from May 2010 until June 2011, and California Attorney General Kamala Harris, 51, who is considered to be very close to Obama, might also be nominated by the president.–PTI
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