Chelameswar unwell, no meeting with CJI

The much-awaited meeting of four protesting judges with Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra to address their issues could not take place on Wednesday as Justice J Chelameswar was not well and did not come to the court.

Though a customary lunch was organised in the judges' lounge on behalf of Justice N V Ramana in the apex court but there was no discussion on the issues, including allocation of cases, raised by seniormost judges - Justices Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B Lokur and Kurian Joseph - in their unprecedented press conference on January 12.

The CJI, who had on Tuesday personally met all the four dissenting judges with three other judges, was expected to meet them again on Wednesday. However, no such meeting took place as Justice Chelameswar was on leave, sources said.

Besides Justice Chelameswar, Justices S A Bobde and Adarsh Kumar Goel were also not available.

In a sign of reaching out, the CJI had for the first time requested all the four judges to come to his chamber on Wednesday. By the evening, there was an indication that the contentious judge Loya case would be heard by a new bench as Justice Arun Mishra-led bench had ordered for posting it before an "appropriate bench". The assigning of the Loya case was cited as one of the reasons by Justice Gogoi to lodge a public protest against the CJI. They had said all was not well in the administration in the Supreme Court as cases with far-reaching consequences were being allocated to selective benches.