The nation witnessed an appalling incident on Friday, asserted as the
worst crisis in the country’s judicial history when the four most senior judges
of the Supreme Court publicly released a seven-page letter which was earlier
written to the Chief Justice of India(CJI), Dipak Misra , pointing out the fact
that the whole of the justice delivery system of the country is in a really bad
shape. Reportedly, at a press conference held at Justice Jasti Chelameswar’s
residence, Justices Ranjan Gogoi, Chelameswar, Madan B Lokur and Kurian Joseph
targeted the CJI saying that “ we tried to collectively persuade the Chief
Justice that certain things are not in order and he must take remedial measures
but our efforts failed”.
This unprecedented crisis has significantly put the integrity and
credibility of the SC at stake. The entire nation is questioning the
administrative functioning of the judicial system. The four justices and the CJI
together make the current Supreme Court Collegium, the highest decision making
body of the judiciary but how can the apex institution of the country be
expected to cater justice and equality when it itself is grappling with inner
tensions and conflict of opinions. The dissent of the four justices seemed to
be a result of distress regarding selective case allotment and the row over the
delay in finalising the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) for appointment of judges
to the higher judiciary.
The letter emphasised that the Government
of India has not responded to the MoP since Oct 2017 and thus it should be
considered that the Government has accepted the order as finalised by the
Collegium. Another pertinent issue was the assignment of an highly important
case to a relatively junior bench of judges ignoring several other senior
judges thus not adhering to the essential and established conventions. The
Justices did not specify but this high profile case is believed to be the death
case of special CBI judge B H Loya, who had been hearing the Sohrabuddin Sheikh
encounter case.
This sudden move by the four
senior-most judges of the SC to go public with complaints against the CJI and
the functioning of the institution has definitely damaged the image of the
whole judicial system of the country. While the Justices opined that they took
this extreme step only to save democracy and discharge their debt towards the
country, the Government has decided not to interfere and let the institution
resolve the matter itself.
- HARSHITA SINGH
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