SC not ‘amrit dhara’ for all problems: CJI

Today its like you wake up in the morning and say let’s go to the SC. You do not approach the competent authority

NEW DELHI: Supreme Court was not an “amrit dhara” for all ailments, Chief Justice of India (CJI) JS Khehar said on Monday, rejecting a public interest litigation that wanted framing of guidelines for “dignified transportation of dead bodies with all religious respect.”

“Today its like you wake up in the morning and say let’s go to the SC. You do not approach the competent authority,” Justice Kehar told the lawyer for petitioner, Jaya Thakur.

Irked over petitions being filed over frivolous issued, Justice Kehar narrated his childhood experience of how he was administered a popular herbal medicine – amrit dhara – for all the ailments. “If a kid had a stomach pain, it was the amrit dhara, if headache then also. These days people think that SC is like amrit dahra. You come here for all the problems. Don’t we have anything else to do,” the Chief Justice of India said, leaving the lawyers, including the petitioner’s counsel, present in his courtoom in splits.

This is not the first time the Chief Justice of India Khehar expressed his anxiety over frivolous PILs. Within a month of taking over as the chief, he warned strict action against those who indulged in “publicity litigation.”

“This has to stop and only this way (imposing heavy costs) it can stop. For years we have not done it. See if you have a good cause we are with you but not for such ... petitions which take away judicial time,” he had remarked. Judges, he told counsel, were forced to waste time to read petitions running into several pages. He blamed inaction on the part of judges, encouraging a spurt in such litigation.

On February 11 he not only dismissed a “trash and nonsensical petition”, but also imposed Rs 10 lakh cost on a Bihar MLA for filing it.