CJI cannot be distrusted, has authority to decide allocation of cases and set up benches, rules Supreme Court

Dismissing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking the framing of guidelines for allocation of cases, the Supreme Court has declared that the Chief Justice of India (CJI) is an institution himself and cannot be distrusted. The petition asked the court to frame guidelines for rational and transparent allocation of cases and constitution of benches to hear them.

Calling the petition scandalous, the court said that the CJI is the highest authority in the court and cannot be distrusted, reported NDTV. The court said that the CJI is the first among equals and has authority to decide allocation of cases and setting up of benches.

The judgment was delivered by a bench comprising CJI Dipak Misra, Justice AM Khanwilkar and Justice DY Chandrachud. The petition was filed by Ashok Pande, a Lucknow resident who had asked that Constitution benches constituted by the Supreme Court should comprise the five senior-most judges, according to Hindustan Times . He had also asked for specialised benches to hear matters pertaining to PILs, tax, criminal, land and service matters.

The peition also asked the CJI should consult the two senior-most judges while allocating work, reported The Times of India .

“Unfettered power is being exercised by the Chief Justices in the matter of formation of Benches, and so, the same is liable to be regulated through specific rules,” the petition said, according to The Hindu . It also asked that the three-judge bench in the CJI’s court should consist only of the CJI and the court’s two senior-most judges.

The PIL was filed in the backdrop of the 12 January press conference held by senior-most apex court judges including Justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B Lokur and Kurian Joseph.

Another petition on a similar issue had been filed by Shanti Bhushan but that is still pending before the court. Bhushan had sought direction that the exercise of authority as a master of roster by the Chief Justice of India in allocating the cases to different benches should be done in consultation with senior judges who are part of top court collegium.

In his PIL, he said that the authority of Chief Justice of India as a master of roster is not an “absolute, arbitrary, singular power” which may be exercised in his “sole discretion” and the CJI “must” exercise his authority in consultation with other senior judges who are also part of collegiums.

Pointing to the “extremely disturbing trend” of listing matters “subjectively and selectively” only before certain benches, the PIL says that trend reflects “serious erosion of independence of the judiciary” by resorting to the method of “favoured listings”. “As a result, justice appears to be skewed and in many cases justice may even stand denied,” it said. It has said that the powers being exercised by the Chief Justice and the concerned Registry officials clearly reflect a “pattern of favouritism, nepotism and forum shopping”.

Though the listing of politically sensitive matters appears to be “routine”, they seem designed in a particular direction to exclude other benches from hearing them, it said.

Describing such selective listing as “unwarranted and unjustified”, the PIL says that “such listings and/or allocations are not happening on account of computer allocation but appears due to human interference in the system”.

With inputs from agencies