Attorney-General defends CJI’s power as ‘Master of Roster’

NEW DELHI: Attorney-General KK Venugopal on Friday defended Chief Justice of India’s power to allocate cases to judges/Benches as “Master of Roster” and opposed shifting it to the collegium, saying it would be a recipe for chaos.

Attorney General KK Venugopal opposed Bhushan’s PIL before a bench comprising Justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan and said the exercise of allocation of cases had to be done by one person and that had to be the CJI.

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 27

Attorney-General KK Venugopal on Friday defended Chief Justice of India’s power to allocate cases to judges/Benches as “Master of Roster” and opposed shifting it to the collegium, saying it would be a recipe for chaos.

“This is not like the appointment of judges. This very exercise is different from selecting judges for elevation. This requires decision on several aspects and that is not something that five or all of them (judges in collegium) can sit and thrash it out,” Venugopal told a Bench of Justice AK Sikri and Justice Ashok Bhushan.

“This is not an exercise that can be taken by multiplicity of persons,” the Attorney-General said opposing a PIL filed by former Law Minister Shanti Bhushan who wanted the collegium to allocate cases to judges/Benches, instead of the current practice of CJI doing it. Having a collegium to allocate cases among themselves would be a recipe for chaos, he added.

The roster issue has been in the news since January 12 when four senior-most judges — Justices J CHelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, MB Lokur and Kurian Joseph — addressed the media to highlight their grievances over the manner of allocation of cases by the CJI.

In his petition, Shanti Bhushan questioned the “absolute discretion” given to the CJI in deciding the roster.

Venugopal, who appeared following the court’s April 13 request, talked about Justice CS Karnan of the Calcutta High Court – who was given a six-month jail term by the top court for contempt of court — used to complain that he was not given bail matters.

He said there could be internecine disputes among judges and someone will have to take a final call.

The Bench said at times judges themselves express anguish as to why ‘I was not given this or that matter’. However, it said there may be difficulties in the collegium allocating cases but the primary concern would be if the Constitution intended such an arrangement.

On behalf of Bhushan, senior advocate Dushyant Dave contended that in the 1998 judges’ appointments case the top court itself interpreted the term ‘Chief Justice of India’ to collectively mean the CJI and his four senior-most judges.

After hearing arguments from Venugopal and Dave, the Bench reserved its verdict, which will be the third one in recent times on the controversial issue of roster. It had delivered two separate verdicts in November 2017 and April 2018 upholding the CJI’s authority as “Master of Roster” to allocate cases and constitute Benches. Both judgments were pronounced by Benches headed by CJI Dipak Misra.