Former Chief Justice of India T S Thakur on Saturday criticised the four senior judges of the Supreme Court who had spoken against incumbent Dipak Misra’s management of the judiciary, PTI reported. Senior judges Jasti Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan Lokur and Kurian Joseph had held the unprecedented press conference
on January 12 to speak out against the manner in which Misra had been assigning cases to benches and other matters.
Thakur said they did not “need to look for outside help to resolving their institutional problems”, PTI reported. Thakur was speaking on the “Independence of the judiciary” at an event organised by non-governmental organisation Global Jurists in New Delhi. The former chief justice described the press conference as a disturbing event that should have been “addressed and solved within the confines of the Supreme Court”.
“An appeal to the nation is not what would have helped the judges,” Thakur said.
The four judges had said that they were speaking out “now so that democracy survives”. They had claimed that their attempts to get the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra to address a judicial crisis had gone unanswered. The judges were referring to Misra’s allocation of cases in the Supreme Court and his handling of his office.
May 18 was Chelameswar’s last working day as he is set to retire on June 22. He shared the dais with Misra at the chief justice’s court, in keeping with the tradition. It is a tradition in the Supreme Court that a judge who is retiring from office sits in the chief justice’s court on their last working day.
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