CJI should have power to allocate cases: A-G

Attorney General KK Venugopal told Supreme Court on Friday that the Chief Justice of India (CJI) alone should have the power to allocate cases and fix composition of benches as involving other judges of the apex court in such matters can lead to chaos.

Taking a stand on the issue whether the Constitution intended CJI to be the master of roster that give him such “unbridled” powers to allocate cases to benches of his choice, Venugopal said that having a Collegium of judges deciding on judicial appointments was quite distinct from allowing them a say in deciding which matters to hear and by what composition of bench. In his opinion, on matters of appointment, collegium judges are not personally involved while in case of allocation of cases, it concerns them directly and allowing multiplicity of persons to decide roster will affect the “unity” among judges.

The statement by A-G came as crucial submissions before a bench of Justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan that reserved orders on a petition filed by senior advocate Shanti Bhushan. The petition listed a set of cases where CJI arbitrarily allocated cases that were politically sensitive to a bench of his choice. Arguing for Bhushan, senior advocate Dushyant Dave submitted that Constitution does not permit such power with CJI alone and hence, similar to having a Collegium for appointing judges, the Collegium of top five judges should sit occasionally and decide the allocation of matters in a transparent manner.

Venugopal said that if collegium or the Full Court is vested with this power to allocate matters, it “would be an unending exercise” and would lead to conflicts as some judges may or may not be interested to hear certain cases. “It is essential that there should be one person doing this job and if it has to be one person, it necessarily must be the CJI. If there is multiplicity of judges involved, it would lead to chaos,” A-G said.

Justice Sikri pointed out that in High Courts too, it is the Chief Justice who allocates matters and composition of bench. On the other aspect of roster preparation, the judge said that often, informally, judges meet CJ and request to be given matters relating to different branches of law. Some judges also express anguish to the Chief Justice for allocating a particular set of cases to them.