{"id":31468,"date":"2018-10-27T14:12:03","date_gmt":"2018-10-27T08:42:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=31468"},"modified":"2018-10-27T14:12:03","modified_gmt":"2018-10-27T08:42:03","slug":"a-roster-of-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/a-roster-of-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"A roster of questions\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/todays-paper\/tp-opinion\/a-roster-of-questions\/article22672617.ece\"><b>A roster of questions<\/b><\/a><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Context:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The allocation of cases in the Supreme Court, with division of work among the judges according to various subject categories, raises more questions rather than being fair and transparent.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>The new roster:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The new roster for allocation of cases in the Supreme Court comes in the light of <\/span><b>dissatisfaction at the manner of allocation of cases and the high-handedness of the Chief Justice of India in asserting his supremacy<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> as master of roster to the exclusion of the senior judges of the court.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was put out to be <\/span><b>operationalised from 5th \u00a0February, 2018<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The roster <\/span><b>aggregates all important cases to the Chief Justice of India<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u2014 politically sensitive cases, all fresh public interest litigations, social justice matters, contempt of court matters, matters dealing with appointment of constitutional functionaries, among others.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Mundane cases<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> with little political significance have been assigned to the <\/span><b>other senior judges<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Key concerns:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Such concentration of power in the hands of one person violates the <\/span><b>foundations of what Justice P.B. Sawant has called \u201ca court of equals\u201d<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Chief Justice of India is only one among equals, with the power to judiciously exercise an <\/span><b>important role of constituting benches<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> This authority <\/span><b>cannot be used in an autocratic manner<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> defying all norms of equity and justice and in disregard for principles of neutrality, impartiality and transparency.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Indisciplined exercise of this authority<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> can lead to a complete subversion of democracy.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Steps to be taken:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A just and fair roster must be one that is <\/span><b>divided subject-wise among judges according to their experience and expertise in those subjects.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Politically sensitive matters should be before the <\/span><b>five senior judges of the Supreme Court.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Among them, the allocation of individual cases must be by <\/span><b>random computer allocation not by the individual decision of any human.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> For other cases as well, if there is more than one judge dealing with a particular subject then cases belonging to that subject should be <\/span><b>randomly allocated among the various judges to whom that subject has been allocated.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Conclusion:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is still scope to revisit this roster through the<\/span><b> prism of objectivity and fairness.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> This must be done, for greater transparency and accountability will only yield more authority to our Supreme Court as the supreme custodian of people\u2019s rights.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A roster of questions\u00a0 Context: The allocation of cases in the Supreme Court, with division of work among the judges according to various subject categories, raises more questions rather than being fair and transparent. The new roster: The new roster for allocation of cases in the Supreme Court comes in the light of dissatisfaction at&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/a-roster-of-questions\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A roster of questions\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}