Questions over CJI’s role

The Supreme Court on Wednesday quite rightly dismissed a PIL by a little-known UP lawyer which sought to constrain the power of the Chief Justice of India to assign work to other judges. But the spirit of the issue at stake over the present CJI lies elsewhere — in the widespread belief that the CJI, while being chief, hasn’t done enough to uphold the judiciary’s independence in relation to the executive.

That’s the nub of the matter, starting with the January 12 press conference where the four seniormost judges of the nation’s highest court had questioned the CJI’s powers to assign cases to other judges because the underlying grouse was that judges were being handpicked to give judgments in certain cases to give the government and the ruling party an easy ride — the death in unusual circumstances of Maharashtra judicial officer B.H. Loya being a case in point.

On Wednesday, dismissing the PIL, the bench of CJI Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud quoted the order of a five-judge bench in November 2017 that the CJI was the “Master of the Roster” while being “primus inter pares”, or first among equals. The order, written by Justice Chandrachud, says: “As a repository of constitutional trust, the CJI is an institution in himself.”

That’s where the rub lies. It’s a matter of “trust” in the end. Even in the case of Karnataka judge Krishna Bhat’s elevation, CJI Dipak Misra is yet to assert himself vis-à-vis the law and justice ministry and pull up the Chief Justice of the Karnataka high court, who appears to be doing the Centre’s bidding, bypassing the Supreme Court.