Lawyers bodies step in to end crisis in SC

Lawyers bodies on Saturday stepped in to end the crisis that struck the top court in the country with the Supreme Court Bar Association asking the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra to assign all PILs including the pending ones to the court of five judges.

The Bar Council of India, the statutory body to regulate legal profession, favoured for in-house mechanism to resolve the issue.

The Supreme Court Bar Association said the concern expressed by four judges is grave and should be addressed by full court.

A day after four senior most judges of the Supreme Court accusing CJI of allocating of cases with far-reaching consequences to select benches, the SCBA, as an immediate solution, urged the CJI to assign all PILs – even those put for hearing on January 15 – to the court of first five judges including the CJI.

Four senior most judges Justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B Lokur and Kurian Joseph on Friday addressed a press conference, the first time in the history of the Supreme Court, to allege that administration is not in order and many things, less than, desirable have happened in recent past. Justice Gogoi also objected to allocation to judge B H Loya's case to court number 10.

On Saturday, lawyers regulatory body, the BCI met and decided to send a seven-member delegation to meet the SC judges personally on Sunday to "resolve the issue peacefully". "No political party or person should take undue advantage of the situation," the BCI chairman Manan Kumar Mishra said.

"We are ready to mediate. All these things should not come out in the public," he said.

"Whatever differences judges have over roster or allocation of cases, should be resolved by in-house mechanism without airing views in public," he said. He also termed as "unfortunate" that Congress Rahul Gandhi and others political parties talked about it.

In a statement, SCBA president Vikas Singh said, "It has been unanimously resolved by the executive committee of the SCBA that all PIL matters including the pending PILs should be either taken by the CJI or if he has to assign it any other bench, it should be assigned to the judges in the Collegium." It also said the matters posted for hearing on Monday should be transferred to the first five judges court.

The SCBA also decided to meet individual judges to end the stalemate that has been described as historic and unprecedented as the four judges said their repeated requests to the CJI were not acceded to. They had on Friday said, "Unless the institution is saved, democracy would be in danger."

"The difference that have been reported in the press by the four senior judges of the SC and the other differences... are of grave concern and should be immediately considered by the full court of the Supreme Court," stated another resolution passed by the SCBA.