The chief justice also maintained that any judge found to have trespassed any land is not fit to be elevated. “Collegium takes a decision. I have to weed out things. We have not committed any mistake,” he said when asked if the Dinakaran issue had dented the image of the judiciary.

“I am of the firm view that if any judge has trespassed any land or has done anything against law, he is not fit to be elevated to the Supreme Court,” the CJI told a news channel.

However, he said when Justice Dinakaran’s name was recommended for the appointment to the apex court, there was no allegation against him. “There was no allegation regarding Dinakaran when his name was recommended for the apex court. There was no allegation even when he was a judge in the Madras High Court nor when he was chief justice of the Karnataka High Court.

When asked whether the image of the judiciary has been lowered in the eyes of common man in the aftermath of Dinakaran controversy, the CJI said: “No, people don’t take these things seriously.”

Responding to a question whether the apex court did not act in time on the issue, the CJI said: “What can we do. How can we prevent persons attacking some judge. We cannot do anything.

“We don’t have any machinery to go into whether a land has been trespassed by somebody. So we thought Law Ministry or the government has got some machinery to go into the matter so we recommended the matter to be inquired by them.”

On the Ruchika molestation case in which retired director-general of police S P S Rathore was held guilty after a long delay, the CJI said the case was prosecuted by the CBI and there are not enough of designated courts, on which “I wrote a letter about two-and-a-half years ago. I think it is a CBI-investigated case. CBI special courts are less in number and so I requested for at least 60 more CBI special courts.

Special courts should be established. Of course, some steps have been taken but the courts are not coming into existence so far,”  he said. About the Ruchika case, Balakrishnan said: “It is a long period of course. It is a very disturbing trend, but such cases are less. There have been cases in Rajasthan which finished in 10-15 days.”