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CJI must act and resolve the crisis of faith in judiciary: Ex-chief justice of Patna HC

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Justice Iqbal Ahmed Ansari says CJI must not give anyone reason to complain, not only judges and lawyers, even litigants must not be able to raise doubts.

Former chief justice of Patna High Court, Iqbal Ahmed Ansari, was a colleague of three of the four senior Supreme Court judges who held an “extraordinary” press conference on 12 January and questioned the conduct of the Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra. He was chief justice of Patna HC, a position held by CJI Misra before he was elevated to the apex court. In an interview with Special Correspondent Apurva Vishwanath, Ansari spoke about the latest standoff from a judge’s perspective. Excerpts:

Was going public with grievances against the chief justice an ill-advised move on the part of the four judges?

I certainly wish for a situation where the judges did not feel compelled to take such an unprecedented step. They are very accomplished and carry with them vast experiences of working in high courts from all over the country. So instead of second-guessing their decision maybe we should listen to what they are saying.

The chief justice must act and resolve this crisis of faith in the judiciary.

Why is it that several legal experts have said the four judges must have resigned instead of holding a press conference?

Do these experts mean to say four senior judges should have resigned for someone else’s mistake? If disclosing their problems to people will lead to loss of confidence of the court, just imagine what a mass resignation could do. No one should be told to not speak up and demand course correction, least of all four senior judges. In all seriousness, I do not understand why they say that.

When you say “mistake”, what do you mean?

There is more than one. Firstly, no chief justice can go picking benches to suit the case. I keep hearing many experts say on television debates that as chief justice he can do so since he is the master of the roster. Does this mean all chief justices have been exercising this power whimsically? That cannot be the case. There have been rules for 200 years on how a chief must function.

Secondly, the handling of the medical college case that Prashant Bhushan brought gives anybody a reason to question the chief. Even if the allegations themselves do not have any merit, he cannot preside over a bench and rule that his rights are superior to his brother judges.

When two judges refused to be a part of his seven-judge bench, the chief should have reconstituted it. Instead, he simply made it a five-judge bench immediately as if the refusal of those two judges did not matter. That is unconscionable for any court.

You have been a chief justice of a high court. Are there best practices from high courts on the assignment of cases that the apex court can put in place?

High courts are more transparent on this issue. A list is drawn every session and made public. A chief justice can at most give a selective category of cases to a judge or a bench but cannot take away individual cases in that category from any judge without assigning reason. In high courts, it is also rare that you see that most important matters are before the chief justice’s court. This happens in the Supreme Court with every chief.

But the chief must not give anyone reason to complain. Not just judges and lawyers, even litigants must not be able to raise doubts.

Is it legitimate to wonder if high courts and lower courts will take inspiration from the recent incident and defy protocol?

Anybody who understands the way high courts function will know that this is not a reasonable apprehension. You see, for every district court, there is a high court to settle such issues. For every high court, there is the Supreme Court that can intervene. This has happened before. But where will the judges of this court go? That is why they were left to take this extraordinary step.

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