Feeling challenged, CJI now tries to protect his authority
Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra is quite annoyed at his authority being challenged by the judges as he reversed orders of two benches this week, the latest on Friday when he quashed constitution of a 5-judge bench by a 2-judge bench headed by Justice J Chelameswar to hear the case of alleged medical admission scam.
Earlier, he not only quashed an order of the bench of Justices AK Goel and UU Lalit to investigate the government’s reasons for lingering over its job of finalising the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) for appointment of Supreme Court and High Court judges, but also dismissed the very petition, ruling that “these are not matters to be taken up on the judicial side and so we are dismissing the petition.”
“We have done many things regarding MoP, but we do not intend to say it here,” CJI said. He was angry with the bench for interfering with the MoP he was negotiating with government as the presiding officer of the collegium.
He, however, did not dismiss two petitions filed by advocates Kamini Jaiswal and Prashant Bhushan’s NGO since aspersions have been cast even on him as a bench headed by him was handling the case in which the scam of alleged Rs 2 crore bribe given to the judges.
Instead, the 5-Judge bench he had constituted to quash the Chelameswar bench’s order of setting up a bench to hear the matter rules that the matter will be allocated before an appropriate bench for hearing after two weeks. The bench upheld the CJI’s sole power to allocate matters to various benches.
The Court witnessed heated exchanges between the CJI and Bhushan when the latter went to the extent of retorting that “FIR is lodged directly against you.”
“What nonsense. There is not a word in FIR naming me or anyone else as a judge. You are now liable for contempt,” the CJI said.
The Supreme Court Bar Association members present in the court jumped over his retort to keep pressing him to institute contempt proceedings against not only Bhushan but also against Kamini and her lawyer Dushyant Dave for casting aspersions on the CJI.