New Delhi: Justice J. Chelameswar, the senior-most judge in the Supreme Court, on Saturday openly took on the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra for lack of transparency in the allocation of cases to different benches in the Supreme Court and alleged that there must be a new mechanism to deal with this issue.
Participating in the Karan Thapar’s interview at the Constitution Club, he said there should be no suspicion in allocation of cases as that would lead to people losing faith in the judicial process.
He said there was no reason why the CJI ought to have set aside his order referring a writ petition on medical college admission scam to a top five judges of the apex court. He said there was nothing wrong in assigning to himself a writ petition as he felt that it was an important matter.
On a question from Mr. Thapar, whether CJI Misra should be impeached, he said impeachment was not the solution. Rather, there should be an internal mechanism within the judiciary, for dealing with cases of alleged misconduct by judges of Supreme court and High Courts, the senior judge said. Asked then what was the alternative remedy to remove judges facing allegations of corruption and misconduct, Justice Chelameswar said “Some system is required to be set up.…What form it should be it requires deliberation.”
