New Delhi, Feb 1: Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra Thursday put in place a roster system for allocation of cases in the Supreme Court in what could be a move to address the grievances by four-senior most judges over assigning matters that sparked an unprecedented judicial crisis.
Justice Misra has kept to himself the public interest litigation (PIL) cases under the roster system that will come into effect from February 5. Previously, the cases in the apex court were assigned by the CJI in his capacity as master of the roster.
The CJI also allocated to the bench headed by him the petitions based on letters, election cases and matters pertaining to contempt of court and constitutional functionaries. The order of Justice Misra was made public on the official website of the apex court.
The 13-page notification said a roster of the work for fresh cases notified under the order of the CJI will come into effect from February 5 till further orders. The decision to make public the roster system assumes significance as the four seniormost judges — justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, M B Lokur and Kurian Joseph – in their January 12 press conference had questioned the allocation of sensitive PILs and important cases to judges junior in seniority and sought transparency.
The notification has given the category of matters that would be allocated to the benches headed by the CJI and 11 other judges — justices Chelameswar, Gogoi, Lokur, Joseph, A K Sikri, S A Bobde, R K Agrawal, N V Ramana, Arun Mishra, A K Goel and R F Nariman.
As per the roster, the bench headed by Justice Chelameswar would deal with matters like labour, indirect tax, land acquisition and requisition, compensation, criminal matters, etc. Justice Gogoi, who during the press conference, had answered in affirmative the concern over the allocation of the PILs relating to special CBI Judge B H Loya to a bench headed by a particular judge, has been allocated matters relating to labour, indirect tax, company law, MRTP, TRAI, SEBI, RBI, criminal matters, contempt of court, personal law, religious and charitable endowments, mercantile laws, commercial transactions including banking etc.
PTI
