A-G defends CJI’s power as ‘master of roster’

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 27

Attorney General KK Venugopal on Friday defended the 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 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 the 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.

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.

The Bench reserved its verdict, which will be the third one in recent times on the controversial issue of roster. It had delivered two 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.

Congress asks judiciary to assert itself 

After the government returned the SC Collegium’s recommendations to elevate Chief Justice of Uttarakhand High Court KM Joseph as SC judge, the Congress on Friday asked the judiciary to put its foot down and assert its independence.