The Bar Council of India on Saturday said that it had unanimously decided to form a seven-member delegation which will meet the judges of the Supreme Court, a day after four senior justices openly protested against Chief Justice Dipak Misra for reportedly bypassing established traditions in court to assign cases to benches.
“We want that the matter be solved at the earliest,” Bar Council of India Chairperson Manan Kumar Mishra said.
Speaking about the complaint raised by Justices Jasti Chelameswar (pictured above), Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B Lokur and Kurian Joseph, Mishra said that the memorandum of procedure “must be finalised at the earliest”.
“We will write a letter to the government for the same, but is not that big a matter to be brought in public,” he added.
The Bar Council chairperson said the statements made by Congress President Rahul Gandhi and other political parties were unfortunate, and requested them not to politicise the matter. Gandhi had on Friday called for a full court to investigate the claims made by four Supreme Court judges about maladministration in the apex court.
The press conference had evoked mixed reactions from various members of the society.
Mishra, however, praised the government’s reported stance to not interfere as the controversy was part of the “judiciary’s internal matter”.
Supreme Court Bar Association meeting
The Supreme Court Bar Association President Vikas Singh urged the full court to look into the concerns the judges had raised. Earlier on Saturday, Singh had said that the justices’ complaints were not substantial,
The bar association in an emergency meeting also adopted a resolution that urged only the chief justice or the four other senior judges of the apex court to hear all Public Interest Litigation matters, including the one calling for an independent inquiry into the death of special Central Bureau of Investigation judge Brijgopal Harkishan Loya.
“The first meeting of SCBA will be with the Chief Justice of India,” Singh said. “If he agrees with our views, we will take further appointment from the other judges too and fix a meeting with them.”
On Friday, the four judges alleged that the chief justice had violated conventions in his role as the master of the roster. Chief Justice Misra had moved the Medical Colleges bribery scam from Justice Chelameshwar’s court to his own in November 2017.
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