Does it not sound funny that instead of people of India looking towards Supreme Court with lot of expectations, for SC to solve their problems being final arbitration authority, the four judges of SC, with one dubbed as next CJI of India, hold a press conference in Delhi on Friday the 12 Jan 2018, to bring their functional grievances in the public court in the form of a press conference, well knowing that people of India on this issue can do nothing. If in this irresponsible way, the judges of tallest court of India behave then what will happen to our democracy.
On 12 Jan, in the afternoon, four Supreme Court judges under the leadership of justice Chellavaram held a press conference in Delhi. Their major grievance was that they are not being allotted cases based on proper procedure and that CJI of India is allotting cases to the judges as he pleases. They further stated that while CJIs have by tradition right to allot various cases to judges as he pleases, nevertheless he being first among equals he should consult other judges also because this is only by tradition that he is allowed to allot cases and not by law. The other issue was the sudden death of Justice Loya who died of cardiac arrest.
The question is that are these issues so serious that these four judges should break protocol and revolt against the CJI of India? What message are they sending to subordinate courts of India? Suppose tomorrow High court judges of a particular state or for that matter district judges of that state decide to hold same type of conference against their superiors?this will lead to total anarchy in the country. These judges say that they had put up these grievances to the CJI of India but he took no serious action. OK then these honourable judges could have gone to the president of India with their grievances. They could have demanded formation of bench of judges to go into these grievances. Besides if they had grievances only against CJI of India then he is retiring in next two months after that things would have sorted themselves out. So where was the hurry? Why break protocol and wash the dirty linen in public? Finally when this press conference was on of judges, what was the CPM party MP, D Raja was doing in the house of justice chellavaram? Besides where was the need for Shri Rahul Gandhi President of Congress party to hold a press conference of his own on the issue.
All said and done, this entire episode reeks of some deep seated plan or conspiracy to destabilise the Indian democracy with Honrable judges being used as pawns. This entire episode must be investigated by a bench of special judges of Supreme Court and matter analysed thread bare. India and its people need answers.
Brig Arun Bajpai
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