Bar Council of India forms 7-member team to meet Supreme Court judges, asks parties not to politicise matter
The Bar Council of India said Saturday it had decided to form a seven-member delegation that will meet Supreme Court judges in the wake of a crisis in top judiciary after the public criticism of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra by four senior judges.
Bar Council chairman Manan Kumar Mishra welcomed the government’s stand not to interfere and urged parties to refrain from politicising the issue, news agency ANI reported. Mishra said the council wanted an early resolution of the matter.
He had earlier said the council will hold meetings on Saturday and Sunday, adding it was “most unfortunate” that four senior judges sent a message that all was not well with the Supreme Court. He said the issue should have been “sorted out internally”.
In an unprecedented move, Justices Kurian Joseph, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B Lokur and J Chelameswar held a press conference on Friday where they questioned “selective” case allocation and certain judicial orders.
They accused the Chief Justice of not strictly adhering to the rules in assigning cases to appropriate benches, which they said could create “doubts” about the integrity of the top court.
Speaking to the media at the residence of Justice Chelameswar, the judges said the apex court’s administration was “not in order”, and released an undated letter they wrote to Justice Misra in which they conceded that the CJI was the “master of the roster” but this was “not a recognition of any superior authority, legal or factual, of the Chief Justice over his colleagues”.
Soon after, the Congress, led by its president Rahul Gandhi, held a press conference where the party demanded a probe into the concerns raised by the judges. The ruling BJP, though, has refrained from speaking on the issue, calling it an “internal matter of the apex court”, and hit out at the Congress for using it to gain “political mileage.
Supreme Court judges vs CJI: Bar Council requests don’t politicise matter, SC Bar Association cites ‘grave concern’