Chief Justice Dipak Misra meets four senior-most judges of Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: Amid claims and counter-claims about the crisis arising out of the ‘judicial mutiny’ blowing over, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra on Tuesday reached out to the four rebel senior-most Supreme Court judges by inviting them for a meeting in his chamber.

Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra. PTI file

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 16

Amid claims and counter-claims about the crisis arising out of the ‘judicial mutiny’ blowing over, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra on Tuesday reached out to the four rebel senior-most Supreme Court judges by inviting them for a meeting in his chamber.

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The meeting, in which three other judges, including Justice AK Sikri, were also said to be present, remained inconclusive and they were likely to meet again on Wednesday, sources said.

The development comes after days of mediation by senior bar leaders, including Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra and Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) president Vikas Singh, between the top five judges of the country who constitute the Supreme Court collegium that appoints Supreme Court and high court judges.

In an unprecedented move, Justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, MB Lokur and Kurian Joseph had on January 12 held a press conference at Justice Chelameswar’s residence and accused the CJI of arbitrarily allocating work to his colleagues.

The situation in the Supreme Court was "not in order" and many "less than desirable" things had taken place in the last few months, they had said, creating a storm or sorts in legal and political circles.

Even as the CJI attempted to break the ice, bar leaders made contradictory claims regarding the crisis getting blown over.

Attorney General KK Venugopal, who had on Monday said everything had been settled and that it was crisis "a storm in a tea cup", changed his statement on Tuesday. "I think it (crisis) has not been settled. Let’s hope things will be fully settled within 2-3 days,” he said.

Venugopal, however, denied having met any of the judges involved in the controversy.

SCBA president Vikas Singh also expressed hope that the crisis would be resolved by this weekend.

BCI chairman Manan Kumar Mishra, however, asserted there was "absolutely no crisis now" in the Supreme Court and normalcy will be restored soon.

He wondered how a section of media had been reporting that the crisis was still on. All judges were holding their courts and the work was going on normally in the Supreme Court, he said.

A seven-member delegation of the BCI has met at least 15 judges, including the CJI and the four rebel judges, in an attempt to broker peace between the two factions.

"The story is now over," the BCI chairman had said on Monday. Terming the issues raised by the four senior-most judges as "internal issues of the family", Mishra had said everything had been resolved internally and advised political leaders against politicizing the issue.

On Monday judges had resumed work almost 10 minutes late, amid speculations over the next move of the four rebel judges and possible action by CJI who has refrained from making any public statement on the allegations levelled against him by his senior colleagues. Before coming to their respective courtrooms on Monday, the all judges had reportedly met over tea to sort out their differences.