Personal liberty to get priority under new CJI
NEW DELHI: Matters of personal liberty will be prioritised in the new regime, Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud declared on Friday, unveiling his plans as the first judge of the country to grant immediate hearing to petitions asking for bail.
Justice Chandrachud, who took over as CJI on November 9, had a full court meeting on
November 15 with all the judges of the Supreme Court where a resolution was adopted to hear 10 bail matters and 10 transfer petitions on each day of the week.
“We had a full court and it was decided that 10 transfer petitions will be listed every day during the week. Currently, we have 13 benches in the court. So, we will dispose of 650 cases every week on the five working days. We have 3,000-odd transfer petitions at the moment. The endeavour is to finish all the pending transfer petition cases before we close for the winter vacation,” the CJI told the lawyers present in his court hall for assignment of dates of hearing.
Transfer petition cases involve marital disputes where one of the spouses seeks shifting of the case to another place. Under the Constitution as well as civil and criminal procedure codes, only the Supreme Court has the power to transfer cases from one court to another, in the same state or otherwise.
On Friday morning, justice Chandrachud also stressed that a decision has been taken to give precedence to the cases where petitioners have been inside jails or fear imminent curtailment of liberty.
“After 10 transfer petitions, all the benches shall hear 10 bail matters every day... those are the matters of personal liberty and we will prioritise them. All the courts will start their regular boards after hearing these 20 cases,” said the CJI. As the head of the administration in the top court, justice Chandrachud’s statement about putting the spotlight on bail matters is completely in sync with his judicial tenets as a judge who has persistently laid emphasis on personal liberty.
While granting bail in November 2020 to Republic TV editorin-chief Arnab Goswami in an alleged abetment of suicide case, justice Chandrachud held that “deprivation of liberty even for a single day is one day too many”, adding that courts across the country “must ensure that they continue to remain the first line of defence against the deprivation of the liberty of citizens”.
“Arrest is not meant to be and must not be used as a punitive tool because it results in one of the gravest possible consequences emanating from criminal law — the loss of personal liberty,” the judge said in July 2022 while giving bail to Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair in criminal cases registered against him for tweets that offended religious sentiments.