“I am what I am. I cannot change.” This is how the new Chief Justice of India (CJI), Justice Ranjan Gogoi, described himself at a felicitation function on the Supreme Court lawns on Wednesday. However, his first day after being sworn in as the 46th CJI promised change.
Chief Justice Gogoi announced that only “extremely urgent” matters would be allowed to be orally mentioned for out of turn hearing. Parameters of mentioning would change, he said.
This saw the crowd thin away even as advocate Prashant Bhushan made an oral mention of his application against the move to deport seven Rohingya refugees to Myanmar. Chief Justice Gogoi was non-committal, telling Mr. Bhushan that the Bench would have to first study the plea. The causelist, published later in the evening, showed the Rohingya case listed before his Bench on Thursday.
CJI Gogoi was accompanied by Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and K.M. Joseph on the Bench.
The courtroom then witnessed a brief exchange between advocate Ashwini Upadhyay and Chief Justice Gogoi while the Bench was dealing with the few PIL pleas listed for the day. The Chief Justice was irked to find that Mr. Upadhyay, dressed in the robes of an advocate, was both the petitioner and the lawyer “assisting” his own counsel. The Chief Justice commented on the lack of decorum. The petition was quickly withdrawn.
Change was introduced on the administrative side when a new subject-wise roster declared that the Chief Justice and his number two judge, Justice Madan B. Lokur, would hear PIL pleas. Justice Lokur would hear those directed to his court by the Chief Justice.
Later in the evening, at a function organised by the Supreme Court Bar Association, Chief Justice Gogoi said that he and his colleagues were devising a mechanism by which oral mentioning would become redundant. Cases filed would be listed early by default. There would be no unceremonious dropping of cases already scheduled for hearing just because the court had to accommodate a new one mentioned out-of-turn.
Vacancies
Chief Justice Gogoi said that he would also prioritise the filling of about 5,000 vacancies of judges in lower courts across the country. “We will try to do it in about three to four months,” CJI Gogoi said. Nevertheless, he said filling vacancies alone would not reduce backlog. “The solution is in getting the right man” as a judge.
