Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde has decided to share the public interest jurisdiction, which forms a major chunk of cases in the Supreme Court and catapults the court often into the public eye, with three of his senior most colleagues and members of his Collegium.
Public interest petitions assigned by the CJI will accordingly be listed in the courts of Justices N.V. Ramana, Arun Mishra and Rohinton F. Nariman along with other cases.
The changes have been made in the new subjectwise roster published on November 26.
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The fifth member of the Collegium, Justice R. Banumathi, has not been allotted PIL cases.
A new subjectwise roster for allocation of cases was first published after what was an unprecedented press conference held by four senior most Supreme Court judges — Justices Jasti Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B. Lokur and Kurian Joseph (all retired now) on January 12 last year over “selective” allocation of sensitive cases by successive CJIs to certain Benches of the Supreme Court. That roster was implemented from February 5, 2018.