Personal liberty to get priority under new CJI Chandrachud
Matters of personal liberty will be prioritised in the new regime, Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud declared on Friday, unveiling his plans as the first judge of the country to grant immediate hearing to petitions asking for bail.
Matters of personal liberty will be prioritised in the new regime, Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud declared on Friday, unveiling his plans as the first judge of the country to grant immediate hearing to petitions asking for bail.
Justice Chandrachud, who took over as CJI on November 9, had a full court meeting on November 15 with all the judges of the Supreme Court where a resolution was adopted to hear 10 bail matters and 10 transfer petitions on each day of the week.
“We had a full court and it was decided that 10 transfer petitions will be listed every day during the week. Currently, we have 13 benches in the court. So, we will dispose of 650 cases every week on the five working days. We have 3,000-odd transfer petitions at the moment. The endeavour is to finish all the pending transfer petition cases before we close for the winter vacation,” the CJI told the lawyers present in his court hall for assignment of dates of hearing.
Transfer petition cases involve marital disputes where one of the spouses seeks shifting of the case to another place. Under the Constitution as well as civil and criminal procedure codes, only the Supreme Court has the power to transfer cases from one court to another, in the same state or otherwise.
On Friday morning, justice Chandrachud also stressed that a decision has been taken to give precedence to the cases where petitioners have been inside jails or fear imminent curtailment of liberty.
“After 10 transfer petitions, all the benches shall hear 10 bail matters every day... those are the matters of personal liberty and we will prioritise them. All the courts will start their regular boards after hearing these 20 cases,” said the CJI.
As the head of the administration in the top court, justice Chandrachud’s statement about putting the spotlight on bail matters is completely in sync with his judicial tenets as a judge who has persistently laid emphasis on personal liberty.
While granting bail in November 2020 to Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami in an alleged abetment of suicide case, justice Chandrachud held that “deprivation of liberty even for a single day is one day too many”, adding that courts across the country “must ensure that they continue to remain the first line of defence against the deprivation of the liberty of citizens”.
“Arrest is not meant to be and must not be used as a punitive tool because it results in one of the gravest possible consequences emanating from criminal law — the loss of personal liberty,” the judge had said in July 2022 while giving bail to Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair in connection with criminal cases registered against him for his tweets that allegedly offended religious sentiments and incited people.
The CJI, while hearing another case on Friday, also apprised lawyers of the steps taken by him to streamline the listing mechanism and usher in utmost transparency in the manner in which cases get listed in the top court.
“Now that I am heading the administration, I will be as transparent as possible. I will send a matter to the most senior judge in line on a particular bench unless that judge has a short tenure and he or she expresses inability to finish a case. It’s going to be a standard procedure,” said justice Chandrachud, as he explained to a bunch of senior lawyers as to how a case went to the most senior judge on the bench after the retirement of his predecessor, justice Uday Umesh Lalit.
The CJI also said that he is not going to “keep burdening judges” by adding cases to the judges’ boards at the last minute. “I am the CJI now but I have myself faced a lot of problem because of the supplementary boards. It gives the judges a great deal of stress when they finish reading case files at 12 in the midnight and wake up the next morning only to find 10 new cases added to their board. I am cutting down on the supplementary boards.”
He also told the lawyers that all matters registered on Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday will be listed the following Monday, and matters registered on Thursday and Friday will be listed the following Friday. “Automatic dates will be given and lawyers will not have to mention cases for listing,” the CJI added. Cases registered on Wednesday will also be listed next Friday.
Listing of cases has been a perpetual thorn in the flesh for CJIs in the recent past. While justice Chandrachud’s predecessor justice Lalit, during his short tenure of 74 days as the CJI, sought to bring in reforms and listed several hundred cases lying in the cold storage, former CJI NV Ramana invited criticism for his reluctance to list cases bearing significant political and economic ramifications. Cases such as the validity of electoral bonds, the challenges to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the ban on the hijab in Karnataka’s educational institutions were not listed during justice Ramana’s tenure. Justice Lalit listed all these cases and many more during his brief tenure.
