Sena lauds judges ,DMK for Kovind’s intervention Top court won’t hear Loya case on Monday
Congress raises questions after PM Modi’s principal secretary spotted outside the CJI’S residence
NEW DELHI: An unprecedented face-off in the Supreme Court (SC) continued to spark political reactions on Saturday, as the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) called for a presidential intervention and the Shiv Sena asked the government to not interfere in the dispute.
The reactions came a day after four of the senior-most Supreme Court judges — justice J Chelameswar, justice Ranjan Gogoi, justice Kurian Joseph and justice Madan B Lokur — publicly criticised Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra for his style of functioning and allocation of cases.
The judges said they were forced to take the unusual step of holding a press conference because the CJI did not take any steps to address their grievance.
The Shiv Sena, an ally of the BJP, praised the four judges and said attempts were being made to make the judiciary “deaf and dumb”.
“The question that has arisen now is if people are fulfilling their responsibilities towards the nation. Only winning elections is not administration,”said Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray while talking to reporters in Mumbai.
Uddhav said the press conference was a shocking event and added that people would now wonder if they should trust the judiciary. “The government should not interfere in this. Let the judiciary do its work,” he said, adding, “The judges should be appreciated for what they did. There should be an inquiry into the issues raised by them.”
In reply to a question, Uddhav also opined that there should be an inquiry into death of judge Loya. “If someone is raising any doubts, there should be an inquiry to make things clear,”he said.
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray too was critical of the government.
“The press conference by the four senior judges shows how much the government is interfering with the work of the judiciary. This shows the government is keeping control of the judiciary and this is a danger to democracy,” he alleged while talking to the media at Ratnagiri.
In Chennai, DMK working president Stalin said President Ram Nath Kovind should intervene if the judges could not resolve their differences. NEW DELHI: The petitions demanding an independent probe into judge BH Loya’s death are unlikely to be taken up by the Supreme Court on Monday as one of the two judges who heard the matter on Friday is not available.
As per a Supreme Court notice, justice Arun Misra, who heads the bench, will take up chamber matters because justice MN Shantagoudar will not sit on Monday. The cases listed for a hearing that day will get deferred to January 16.
Judge Loya’s case is seen as a flashpoint and the reason for the judges of the top court to publicly accuse the Chief Justice of India for selectively allocating sensitive matters to benches of his choice. Loya died of a cardiac arrest in Nagpur on December 1, 2014, when he had gone to attend the wedding of a colleague’s daughter. He was then hearing the Sohrabuddin encounter case in which various police officers and BJP president Amit Shah were named as parties.
A Mumbai-based journalist, BR Lone, and social activist Tehseen Poonawalla have filed the petition for impartial probe into the death.
It is said the four judges had tried to persuade the CJI on Friday morning to delete and reassign the cases that were listed before the judge — ranked 10th in terms of seniority. The judges decided to address the media after they were told it was not possible to meet their demand at the last moment.
Warning that democracy was at stake, the four senior judges admitted one of the concerns they had was with regard to allocation of judge Loya’s case.
“Four of us went to the CJI today with a request that a particular thing is not in order and it should be rectified. Despite our request, he did not do anything,” justice J Chelameswar told the mediapersons on Friday, without mentioning the Loya case.
When asked whether this request was in connection with the Loya case, his colleague justice Ranjan Gogoi admitted that it was.