Top 5 judges to hear PILs in new SC roster

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 26

Five days before its scheduled reopening after summer vacation, the Supreme Court announced a new roster for allocation of work to judges, under which five senior-most judges, including Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi will deal with public interest litigation and letter petitions from July 1.

Besides CJI Gogoi, other senior judges who will hear PILs and letter petitions are Justice SA Bobde, Justice NV Ramana, Justice Arun Mishra and Justice RF Nariman. The four senior-most judges will hear PILs allocated to them by the CJI, it was announced on the top court’s website.

Election matters — earlier exclusively dealt with by the Chief Justice of India’s Bench — will now be also heard by the Bench headed by Justice Bobde.

Three weeks after four senior-most judges accused him of arbitrary allocation of cases to ‘junior judges’, then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra had on February 1, 2018, announced a subject-wise roster system for allocation of work to his colleagues. Justice Gogoi, who was the senior-most judge after then CJI Misra, was one of them.

In an unprecedented move, the four senior-most judges of the Supreme Court had on January 12 last year held a press conference at Justice Chelameswar’s residence and accused CJI Misra or arbitrarily allocating work to his colleagues.