Justice Jasti Chelameswar travels out of the capital further delaying resolution of crisis in the Supreme Court.
New Delhi: The resolution of the unprecedented crisis in the higher judiciary is likely to be delayed as Justice Jasti Chelameswar, one of the four judges who questioned the decisions of the Chief Justice of India, is travelling out of the capital Thursday and is scheduled to return only on Monday.
“He has a personal engagement in Chennai and since the visit was pre-planned, it could not be cancelled,” sources close to the judge said.
ThePrint has learnt that judges Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Kurian Joseph and Madan B. Lokur met CJI Dipak Misra and gave him a note listing out their specific grievances. The four judges had met Wednesday at Chelameswar’s residence to finalise the draft.
It is also learnt that justices D.Y. Chandrachud, L. Nageswara Rao, A.K. Sikri and S.A. Bobde had spoken to the four judges to list out the issues since a meaningful discussion had not taken place in days, leading to the note.
The eight judges listed above arrived in the Supreme Court complex at 10 am Thursday and met the CJI for about 10 minutes, sources in the court said.
They said the four judges who held the press conference last week asked the CJI to bring in a transparent method of allotting cases. They also asked the CJI to put in place an institutional mechanism to deal with complaints against the CJI in future.
The second issue comes in the backdrop of a complaint made to senior judges seeking an in-house probe against the CJI in connection with a medical college case. This complaint was filed by CJAR, a non-profit led by advocate Prashant Bhushan, to initiate probe against Misra.
However, the four judges are not known to have referred to the complaint during their meeting with the CJI.
The procedure for an in-house probe as laid down in the 1991 Justice Veeraswami case by the apex court says that the CJI will decide on such complaints but has no specific procedure if the complaint is against the CJI himself.