Wednesday<\/span>\u00a0verdict, authored by Justice DY Chandrachud, effectively puts to rest any possibility of the Supreme Court breaking from its time-tested tradition of vesting in the Chief Justice the powers of constituting benches and the allocating cases to them.<\/p>\nThe 16-page verdict by the three-judge bench says: \u201cthe petitioner is not entitled to seek a direction that Benches of this Court should be constituted in a particular manner or, as he seeks, that there should be separate divisions of this Court. The former lies exclusively in the domain of the prerogative powers of the Chief Justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the issue of how judges must be selected for various benches and to hear different kinds of cases that come before the apex court, the verdict says: \u201cthe petitioner seems to harbour a misconception that certain categories of cases or certain courts must consist only of the senior-most in terms of appointment. Every Judge appointed to this Court under Article 124 of the Constitution is invested with the equal duty of adjudicating cases which come to the Court and are assigned by the Chief Justice. Seniority in terms of appointment has no bearing on which cases a Judge should hear… every Judge of the Court is entitled to and in fact, duty bound, to hear such cases as are assigned by the Chief Justice…\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTo suggest that any Judge would be more capable of deciding particular cases or that certain categories of cases should be assigned only to the senior-most among the Judges of the Supreme Court has no foundation in principle or precedent. To hold otherwise would be to cast a reflection on the competence and ability of other judges to deal with all cases assigned by the Chief Justice notwithstanding the fact that they have fulfilled the qualifications mandated by the Constitution for appointment to the office,\u201d the verdict adds.<\/p>\n
The verdict concludes by saying: \u201cUnderlying the submission that the constitution of Benches and the allocation of cases by the Chief Justice must be regulated by a procedure cast in iron is the apprehension that absent such a procedure the power will be exercised arbitrarily. In his capacity as a Judge, the Chief Justice is\u00a0primus inter pares<\/em>: the first among equals… Article 146 reaffirms the position of the Chief Justice of India as the head of the institution… As a repository of constitutional trust, the Chief Justice is an institution in himself… The ultimate purpose behind the entrustment of authority to the Chief Justice is to ensure that the Supreme Court is able to fulfil and discharge the constitutional obligations which govern and provide the rationale for its existence. The entrustment of functions to the Chief Justice as the head of the institution is with the purpose of securing the position of the Supreme Court as an independent safeguard for the preservation of personal liberty. There cannot be a presumption of mistrust. The oath of office demands nothing less.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra rules that allocation of cases and constitution of benches is the exclusive prerogative of the Chief Justice Putting to rest the debate over the role of the Chief Justice as the master of the roster, the Supreme Court,\u00a0on Wednesday\u00a0(April 11), summarily dismissed a petition that challenged his powers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":41219,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497],"tags":[29611,38236,23739,12371,320],"yst_prominent_words":[46349,46350,46348,37470,34805,31072,46354,20926,16170,23744,23741,46351,46355,37469,34806,4293,23743,46352,46353,4402],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2018\/04\/11140759\/CJI-Dipak-Misra.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41216"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41216"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=41216"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=41216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}