MULTIPLE JUDGES CAN LEAD TO CHAOS: AG TO SC

New Delhi, April 27: Attorney General K.K. Venugopal on Friday opposed the plea of former law minister Shanti Bhushan to strip the Chief Justice of India (CJI) of the exclusive power to allocate cases, telling the Supreme Court that any attempt to delegate it to other judges would lead to ‘chaos’.

Venugopal stressed the need for “unity” among the judges of the top court and said Bhushan’s plea to vest the power to allocate cases to the five-member Collegium might lead to ‘conflict’ among judges on who would hear which matter and multiplicity of authorities.

The differences among Supreme Court judges over allocation of cases had surfaced at the January 12 presser by four senior most judges who had raised the issue and it entered the courtroom with the filing of Bhushan’s plea challenging the CJI’s power as the ‘master of the roster’.

The AG told a bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan that the composition of benches and allocation of cases in the apex court was not an exercise which could be taken up by multiple persons and if one person has to decide it, then it has to be the CJI. If collegium or the full court is vested with this power, it “would be an unending exercise which may also result in unity of judges being not there. Unity of judges for dispensation of justice in the highest court is needed,” Venugopal, who was earlier asked by the bench to assist in the matter, said.

“It is essential that there should be one person doing this and if it has to be one person, then it has to be the CJI,” he told. — PTI