Plea seeks clarity on CJI’S authority
NEW DELHI: Former law minister and senior advocate Shanti Bhushan has filed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court seeking clear principles and procedures for allocating cases to benches. Shanti Bhushan, in his petition also wants clarification on the administrative authority of the Chief Justice of India (CJI) as the master of roster.
In the petition filed through his son, advocate Prashant Bhushan, the petitioner said the power to list matters must be shared with the senior-most judges of the Supreme Court, and that the master of roster power “cannot be unguided and unbridled discretionary power, exercised arbitrarily by the Chief Justice of India(cji)”. Such an authority should be exercised by the CJI in consultation with senior judges, he added.
He also wrote a letter to the top court’s secretary general stating the petition should not be listed before a bench that includes CJI Dipak Misra, who is also a respondent along with the registrar of the top court. Bhushan said it would be appropriate that the plea is placed before the three senior-most judges of the top court to allocate the matter before an appropriate bench.
The petition assumes significance because the four SC judges who had called unprecedented press conference on January 12 and objected to the allocation of important sensitive PILS before “junior judges” had given a similar suggestion to the CJI.
Bhushan said the CJI or the registrar should not list any matter contrary to the Supreme Court Rules, 2013 and Handbook on Practice and Procedure and Office Procedure.
“This petition raises issue as to extremely disturbing trend of listing matters subjectively and selectively as clearly discernible from the available data of matters recently filed and listed before only certain benches,” read the plea, which wants to limit the discretion of the CJI in allocating cases in the absence of any rules. This would also improve court’s administrative management.
Last year Prashant Bhushan had an open confrontation with CJI Misra over a case related to the medical college scam, which the CBI was probing. A petition filed by Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms had sought a court-monitored SIT probe into the case in which a retired judge from the Orissa High Court was arrested. As CJI Misra had previously decided a case filed by the medical college under probe, CJAR had mentioned the matter before Justice J Chelameswar, who ordered the petition to be heard by top five judges of the court. However, a subsequent order by a constitution bench led by CJI Misra, holding CJI as the master of roster, rendered the direction infructuous.