The biggest stalemate in the judiciary between the Chief Justice of India (CJI) and the four senior most judges of the Supreme Court seems to have finally ended. The CJI on Thursday made public the Roster of Work for Judges of Supreme Court that mentions the category of cases to be heard by each presiding judge of the apex court. The roster will come into effect from Monday and will remain in place till further orders passed by the CJI.
Though the roster remained in existence, this is the first time it was made public on the apex court website. The move is seen as an attempt by CJI to address the concerns of the four senior most judges of the apex court who held a press conference on January 12 to complain about the CJI arbitrarily allocating politically sensitive cases to a particular bench. Under the 13-page roster system that will come into effect from Monday, the CJI has kept all PIls, letter petitions (letters written by citizens directly to CJI or apex court), social justice matters, habeas corpus matters, cases of appointment of constitutional functionaries and matters relating to Commissions of Enquiry among several other heads of cases.
The senior most judge Justice J Chelameswar has not been allocated any matter related to PIl or social justice. So is the case with Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Kurian Joseph, the other judges who presided with Justice Chelameswar at the press conference held to criticize the CJI’s case allocation policy. The lone exception seems to be Justice Madan B lokur, who despite being at the press conference, retained his earlier roster comprising social justice matters and environment issues.
With 12 presiding judges currently in Supreme Court, the roster specifies what matters each of the 12 judges will hear. Besides the top five judges, the roster contained the category of cases to be heard by Justices AK Sikri, SA Bobde, R K Agrawal, NV Ramana, Arun Mishra, AK Goel and RF Nariman.
The January 12 press conference exposed the rift within the ranks over allocation of cases to judges who are junior in seniority. Though the CJI is the “master of roster” and can allocate cases to benches he desires, the joint presser by the top judges brought the CJI to the talking table.
After the four judges demanded CJI to fix the roster of work for judges and make it transparent, the CJI felt the suggestion furthered the interest of independence and transparency in judicial functions.