Bombay HC gets new ‘master of the roster’

All civil PILs will be heard by CJ Patil

Seemingly taking a cue from the former Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra’s maxim, ‘master of the roster,’ the newly sworn-in Chief Justice (CJ) of Bombay High Court has prepared a new roster, which will be enforced from November 19, the day when the court resumes after the Diwali vacation.

Justice Naresh Patil, who took over as CJ last week, has decided to hear all the civil public interest litigations (PILs). This essentially means that none of the senior-most judges of the High Court will be hearing any PILs, except those which are especially assigned to them.

So, as per the new assignment/roster uploaded on the High Court website, CJ Patil will be hearing all civil PILs. It further says all matters pertaining to the “challenge to any infrastructure projects including railways, metro, roads, bridges, surface transport and water transport” will be heard by a bench headed by Justice Patil.

The new assignment leaves labour and service matters, forest matters, petitions challenging the decisions of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), etcetera, for the second senior-most judge – Justice Abhay Oka, who has time and again taken the government to task while hearing PILs. He will, however, continue to hear specially assigned matters pertaining to the environment, which he has been hearing for years together.It would not be out of place to mention that in the past, too, all PILs were removed from the board of Justice Oka, who has also faced allegations of ‘harbouring a bias’ against the Maharashtra government in the noise pollution matter. Accordingly, Justice Satyaranjan Dharmadhikari, the third seniormost judge in the High Court has been assigned to hear matters pertaining to education. The roster does not mention if he will hear PILs pertaining to education.

Justice Dharmadhikari will, however, continue to hear specially assigned matters like the PIL for monitoring the probe in the Dabholkar-Pansare murder cases.