Master of roster role key for CJI to keep unity: AG
NEW DELHI: Attorney general KK Venugopal, the country’s top legal officer, said on Friday that the Chief Justice of India (CJI)’s position as Master of the roster was not meant to just allocate cases to various benches, but was also essential for ensuring unity in the top judiciary.
Venugopal’s remarks came in response to a suggestion by former law minister and senior advocate Shanti Bhushan that the CJI exercises his authority as Master of the roster in consultation with other senior judges in the Supreme Court collegium. The collegium comprises the five senior-most SC judges and recommends appointments to the higher judiciary.
“This is not like the appointment of judges. This very exercise (allocation of cases) is different from selecting judges for elevation.This requires decisions on several aspects and that is not something that five or all of them (judges) can sit and thrash out,” the AG told a bench of justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan.
Venugopal appeared before the bench in response to the judges’ request asking him to assist in the case. The court had on April 13 said it would like to hear the AG on the matter. According to a petition by Bhushan, the CJI cannot unilaterally mark “sensitive” cases on his own but the CJI-led collegium should have a say in the matter.
Allocation of cases was the key reason for four judges — justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, MB Lokur and Kurian Joseph — to have gone public with their grievances over the way the top court was being administered by CJI Dipak Misra.
After Venugopal completed his arguments, the bench reserved its verdict on Bhushan’s petition. The matter was heard for over an hour.
“Procedural difficulties can always be solved, but we have to look into our constitutional position,” the bench said after the hearing ended.
In Venugopal’s opinion, the chief justice enjoys a special status and he alone can assign work to a single-judge bench and to judges sitting in a division bench or a full bench.
According to him, if a collective decision is to be taken for allocation of cases, it could result in chaos.
“Each (judge) may have a view and may ask why a particular case was not given to them. This conflict is what is contemplated. It can happen,” he told the bench. If judges are given the option of deciding what case they would like to hear and decide on, the machinery of the court will collapse and judicial work would “cease” because of internal strife it would generate, the AG submitted. Justice Sikri told Venugopal that such a situation would arise only if a judge says that he or she wants to be assigned a particular case.
“But why not decide it collectively,” the judge wondered.
Because this would lead to internecine disputes among the judges, the AG replied. Even the collegium system is not free from criticism, he pointed out.
Justice Sikri recalled his experience of working in high courts. “There sometimes judges would go to the chief justice and request that cases of some jurisdiction be allotted to them. They may also express their displeasure,” he said. Bhushan’s lawyer and son Prashant Bhushan differed with the AG’s view, arguing that if the judges could have their own interests, so can the CJI.
Senior advocate Dushyant Dave, also appearing for the petitioner, said the orders and rules of allocation of work to the benches “does not empower the CJI to frame roster or list cases before benches”.
He read out various provisions of the Constitution related to the functioning of the Supreme Court and pointed out that the framers wanted “collegiality” in the judiciary, legislature and executive on sensitive matters and added that “framing of roster and listing of cases today is an extremely sensitive area”.