CJI, 4 future CJIs on Ayodhya Bench: Why it is inclusive and significant

New Delhi, Jan 9: The Bench that the Supreme Court constituted to hear the Ayodhya appeals is a very significant. It has the sitting Chief Justice of India on it and four future CJIs.

The judges on the Bench are Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi, Justices, S A Bobde, N V Ramanna, U U Lalit and D Y Chandrachud. All the four judges are set to become the next Chief Justices of India.

The Bench includes a more inclusive system especially in the wake of the infamous press conference that the four senior most judges had addressed when Justice Dipak Misra was the Chief Justice. They judges had expressed differences over the CJI being the master of the roaster. They also said that matters were being allocated to Benches in an arbitrary manner.

The four judges, including Justice Ranjan Gogoi had sought for a system to handle administrative matters of the court. Justice Kurien, who has now retired on the last day of office had sought for a more inclusive system and wanted the entire court to be taken along to reduce the arbitrariness.

The Bench that was constituted is an interesting one considering it would hear a very important case, which has been a subject matter of debate ahead of the general elections of 2019. This Bench would fix the date to hear the Ayodhya appeals on January 10. The Bench would also decide whether it would hear the case on a day to day basis.

The Ayodhya case has been pending for long now, which has given rise to demands for the government to take the ordinance route. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had however said that they would wait for the legal process to get over.