Supreme Court makes public system for allocation of cases

New Delhi: In an apparent move to put an end to the controversy raised by four senior-most judges, the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra on Thursday made public and transparent the new roster system from February 5 on allocation of work to the 12 different benches including the CJI, who will hear all-important PILs. The new roster system has been notified on the Supreme Court website, describing the work allocated to each of the benches headed by the CJI and justices Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan Lokur, Kurian Joseph, A.K. Sikri, S.A. Bobde, R.K. Agrawal, N.V. Ramana, Arun Mishra, A.K. Goel and Rohinton Nariman. This new roaster will apply to the fresh cases and not the existing cases.

Till now though daily, weekly and advance lists of cases are published and put on the website, the litigants are not aware before which judge their cases will be listed. Though the CJI has made an attempt to resolve the roster system, sources told this newspaper that the issue raised by the four judges is yet to be fully resolved to their satisfaction.

On January 12, four judges Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan Lokur and Kurian Joseph who felt that they were being sidelined in allocation of important cases, alleged that the situation in the Supreme Court was not in order and said many “less than desirable” things have taken place in the last few months. In an apparent warning, they said lack of impartiality in allocation of high profile cases could imperil India’s democracy.