New Delhi: On 5 December 2023, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul’s bench in courtroom number 2 of the Supreme Court was slated to hear the case on the central government delaying appointments and transfers of judges. However, the case was deleted from the list, prompting the counsel for one of the petitioners to call the move “very strange”.
“I will just say one thing. I have not deleted the matter,” Justice Kaul said in court. “I am sure the Chief Justice knows about it…some things are best left unsaid, sometimes.”
A few days after his swearing-in in November 2022, the Chief Justice of India and master of the roster, Dhananjaya Chandrachud, remarked that he is keeping a “close watch on the listing of cases”.
The privilege and the administrative power of the Chief Justice of a court to constitute benches and allocate cases at their absolute discretion is called the ‘master of roster’ system.
Without any transparency or guidelines to keep a check on the misuse of this discretionary power, concerns and speculations arise about potential government influence whenever bench assignments align with government interests.
Our analysis of eight cases before benches either consisting of Justice Bela Madhurya Trivedi or presided over by her reveals violations of the 2017 Supreme Court Handbook on Practice and Procedure And Office Procedure, which says cases should be retained before the senior judge before whom the case was first listed or listed before a judge hearing a similar case.
These are Umar Khalid’s bail plea, petitions challenging provisions of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA)1967; petitions challenging dismissal of a fresh investigation against former Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami for alleged involvement in a highway tender scandal; two petitions connected to a skill development scam in which former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu is a co-accused; a petition connected with the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) probe in a disproportionate assets case against deputy chief minister of Karnataka D K Shivakumar; a medical bail plea filed by jailed Tamil Nadu minister Senthil Balaji; and a bail plea of Bhima-Koregaon violence case co-accused Mahesh Raut.
This story was originally published in article-14.com. Read the full story here .
