From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: Supreme Court senior advocate Dushyant Dave practising for over three decades and who headed the Supreme Court Bar Association, has suggested that the assignment of a Bench should be automatic and computerised to prevent any touch of the human hand instead of the Chief Justice of India deciding the Benches as the master of roster.
In an interview to LiveLaw web magazine, he said: “The Chief Justice can decide the constitution of the benches, the Chief Justice can decide allocation of subject matters to those benches, but once having done that, the computer must automatically function and go on sending the matters according to its own interpretation. A human intervention by the registry or by the chief justice is extremely disturbing.”
Dave cited how the cases of a particular corporate house used to be allocated to one particular bench. “How else do you explain that nine judgments of one of the largest corporate houses were delivered by a bench presided by Justice Arun Mishra? Despite my letter in 2019 June, by which time four matters were sent, after which five more were also sent by Chief Justice Gogoi…. what does this tell you? When Justice Gogoi’s book was launched, he welcomed the head of the corporate entity with his family at that book launch? What does this tell you? It is really disturbing to see that these kinds of incidents can take place and everybody in the Supreme Court wants to shut their eyes! What are the judges doing? Supreme Court comprises of essentially good judges! Why are the good judges silent? Is the supreme court particular bench meant for a corporate house? This thing is happening for a long, long time! I do remember long back when Kerala’s former Chief Minister was indicted or something- Justice Balakrishnan was the Chief Justice- in those days, the matter was assigned only to 1st five benches on mentioning, and the matter was sent to court 9 or 10 and immediately an interim order was granted. This is happening time and again.”
Dave also shared concerns about the workings of the registry.
“There is a growing feeling among a lot of young lawyers that their matters do not get listed for months and months and matters of certain powerful advocates-on-record suddenly get listed, sometimes even though from the same judgment, the other advocate-on-record has filed a petition in the Supreme Court much earlier. All these things send an extremely wrong message.
“As the President of the bar, I tried to talk with every Chief Justice and I must say that Chief Justice Thakur tried to protect the system quite remarkably and there was a lot of interaction. He even created a kind of judges and lawyers group for grievance redressal; unfortunately, the moment he stepped down, the next judge did not care for that grievance redressal mechanism. There must be a mechanism. Today, judges are absolute masters. The bar has no way to tell the judges what is happening.”
Dave wants the rot in the Supreme Registry be checked. “These young lawyers are actually suffering. The genuine litigants are actually suffering. The powerful litigants sometimes get the quicker slot and sometimes a favourable slot….Shocking that the registry officials are completely oblivious to this pain being suffered by young members of the bar or the not-so-successful members of the bar.
If cases filed in High Courts can get listed the next day, why can’t it happen in the Supreme Court, Dave asked and pointed out that if you file a matter in any High Court, it will be listed in 2-3-4 days. It is so because the courts have complete control over their boards in the High Courts, but not so in the Supreme Court.
Very judges of the top court, who have come from the High Courts, are either unwilling to take corrective measures or are completely wanting to ignore them. Young members of the bar hardly get one or two briefs in a month but find it difficult to get their matters listed in a day or two or three unlike the powerful advocates-on-record who file 50 matters in a month.
Dave wanted support of the institution to these young men and women as their clients need justice. What can they show to the briefing lawyers from the states if the matter is not listed for long time, he added.
