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Defending the Chief Justice of India’s powers to assign cases to various benches, senior advocate Adish C Aggarwala on Thursday wrote an open letter to CJI D Y Chandrachud that such “assignment… is not open to question on the judicial or the administrative side”.
In his letter, which comes a day after senior advocate Dushyant Dave wrote an open letter to the CJI conveying his concern over the allocation of certain cases by the SC Registry, Aggarwala, who is also the President of the Supreme Court Bar Association, expressed “shock” over Dave’s letter and said that “of late, there has been a growing tendency of writing such letters to sitting Chief Justices of India to exert undue pressure on the administration of justice”.
“The assignment of cases is not open to question on the judicial or the administrative side and, as a corollary, it is neither required to be by way of a speaking order nor is it required to be justified by responding to any person calling it into question. The writing of such letters is therefore malicious, and calculated to embarrass the administration” and “time has come where one should put an end to the practice of writing of such letters”, the senior advocate wrote.
Aggarwala said, “It is essential to curb every attempt to scandalise the court mechanisms with insinuations and falsehood, aimed at mischievously shaking the confidence of the public in our courts.”
Requesting the CJI “to ignore these attempts, which are nothing but self-serving attacks on the independence of the judiciary”, Aggarwala said, “the Bar has full faith and reposes full confidence in the neutrality and unprecedented administrative skill” of the CJI and companion judges.
“It is for the first time in the history of the Supreme Court that the last person standing in the queue has also been given equal and full access to justice. After Your Lordship took over as Chief Justice of India, all administrative issues have been streamlined right from mentioning of matters, listing of cases and other issues concerning the Registry. The conduct of hearings in the Supreme Court by all Hon’ble Judges boosts the confidence of every member of the Bar because the treatment being given to a young lawyer is the same which is accorded to a senior advocate. This has encouraged litigants to not be dependent upon only senior members of the Bar. Those who are unable to afford unrealistically high fees are also enthusiastically seeking justice and are being given a fair hearing, and relief as per the merit of their case. Perhaps the said treatment at par of younger members of the Bar has not gone down well with a few senior lawyers who have started making concerted efforts to overawe this system. I must assure Your Lordship that the entire Bar, except a few individuals, are fully satisfied with your leadership, both on the judicial side as well as on the administrative side,” said the senior counsel.
Aggarwala said “while heading one of the three organs of the State, the CJI is bound to encounter some detractors who could be canvassing for disgruntled litigants who couldn’t secure the relief they desired”. “This can be discouraged by steadfastly ignoring such attempts and continuing with the stellar work and this unprecedented exercise to cleanse the administrative system and to clear the backlog by assigning matters as per domain expertise and various other considerations which the Hon’ble CJI is entitled to keep in mind,” he said.
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