Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra on Thursday unveiled a new roster system in the top court under which he would himself deal with all PILs, election matters and cases involving appointment of constitutional functionaries.
The roster will take effect from February 5, 2018, and will continue till further orders. An announcement to this effect was made on the official website of the top court.
The measures came by way of ameliorative steps days after the next four senior-most in the court hierarchy, Justices Jasti Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Kurian Joseph and Madan B. Lokur, went public with their dissatisfaction with the manner in which cases were arbitrarily assigned to benches.
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They specifically referred the case involving the death of judge B.H. Loya who was dealing with a case involving BJP chief Amit Shah when he died of a heart attack. Suspicions have been raised over his sudden death. His successor had discharged Shah.
The roster makes no drastic change to the existing system of allocating court work and is unlikely to satisfy those clamouring for substantive changes in the court’s functioning.
The CJI will also deal with habeas corpus petitions, contempt matters and cases involving law officers, cementing his position as the first among equals who will deal with all important cases.
Number 2 Jasti Chelameswar will deal with land acquisition, money matters, court staff, eviction cases and consumer protection cases.
Justice Ranjan Gogoi, who will be CJI when Justice Misra demits office in October, will deal with labour matters, indirect taxes, company matters, banking and mortgage, liquor and personal law matters.
Justice Madan B. Lokur will deal with land acquisition, environment and ecology, mines and minerals and armed forces, not a very radical change given that he already deals with these cases.
The other judges whose subject wise roster has been defined are Justices A. K. Sikri, S.A. Bobde, R.K. Agrawal, N.V. Ramana, Arun Mishra, A.K. Goel, and Rohinton Fali Nariman. These 12 senior judges will head division benches dealing with cases as per the subject list.