Where There’s Smoke...
You are not even worthy of contempt.” On November 14, Supreme Court Chief Justice Dipak Misra shut the lid on a week of unpreced ented fireworks over a judge- bribing scandal. The law yers, who alleged judicial corruption, escaped contempt of court by a whisker. But the ugly meltdown left behind a cloud of suspicion and unanswered questions.
Now the messy details. On November 8, petition 1 came to the bench of Justice J. J. Chelameswar in the SC. The petitioner, CJAR ( Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms), was seeking an independent SIT investigation into an ongoing CBI probe— a conspiracy involving hawala connections, cash- for- influence, top judges and a blacklisted medical college that wanted to be reg ularised. Advocate Prashant Bhushan argued that CJI Misra should recuse himself on grounds of conflict of interest as he was on the bench that gave a favourable review to an earlier case relating to the institute. The bench listed it for November 10. That afternoon, Bhushan got a call from the SC registry: the CJI had listed the case. A very similar petition 2 arrived, again in Justice Chel ames war’s court, on November 9, this time from CJAR member Kam ini Jaiswal. The bench directed a constitution bench of five judges to hear it on November 13. On November 10, Justices A. K. Sikri and A. Bhushan asked why a second petition was filed. A tumultuous scene ensued later in the day, as a five- judge bench delivered a harsh rebuke and a raft of lawyers from the Supreme Court Bar Association ( SCBA) took a hard stand against Bhushan.
SCBA president Rupinder S. Suri accused the CJAR, Bhushan and Jaiswal of “forum shopping”— a derogatory term used when lawyers try to get a matter listed before a certain bench, anticipating favourable orders. The five- judge bench annulled the order passed by Justice Chelameswar and decl ared: “The CJI is master of the roster and he alone has the prerogative to constitute benches and allocate cases.”
Judicial luminaries are shocked by the incidents in the SC. Veteran jurist Soli Sorabjee, in a TV interview, said, “It’s very easy for a person to ask a certain judge to recuse himself, but it must be on substantial grounds.” Legal scholar N. R. Madhava Menon thinks lawyers are “maligning the court without justification”. Without evidence, or an FIR, what is being said about the CJI and conflict of interest is all conjecture, he says. The CJI raised the biggest question: “Everybody now doubts the Supreme Court. That too, merely on the basis of rumours. How do we repair this damage?”