SC to examine plea on allocation of cases

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to examine a petition seeking to regulate the Chief Justice of India's (CJI) administrative discretionary power to constitute benches and allocate important cases. The petition was filed by noted advocate Shanti Bhushan.

Earlier, Prashanth Bhushan requested the bench to take up the case seeking allocation of work to be done by a Collegium and argued that he had filed the plea last week but apex court registry was yet to list it.

A Bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan sought the assistance of Attorney General K K Venugopal and Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta in dealing with the PIL stating that the CJI cannot exercise arbitrary power in allocation of cases.

However, the Bench took objection when Bhushan's counsel made an attempt to bring to its notice the unprecedented January 12 press conference held by four of the court's most senior judges, Justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, M B Lokur and Kurian Joseph, who had accused Chief Justice Dipak Misra of arbitrarily allocating cases.

"We are not going to go into it. We are not concerned with it for many reasons and obvious reasons. Don't say all this," the Bench said.

The Bench also referred to its recent verdicts, saying it has already held that the CJI is the 'master of roster'.

In an unprecedented move, on January 12, four senior Supreme Court judges, including Justice Chelameswar, had called a press conference to express their displeasure with the CJI Dipak Mishra and with the way he was assigning cases.

OneIndia News (with PTI inputs)