Kurian Joseph stirs the pot on former CJI’s functioning

Published : Dec 04, 2018 14:01 IST

Justice Kurian Joseph (left) and former Chief Justice of India Dipak Mishra at a function in New Delhi on December 3.

Justice Kurian Joseph (left) and former Chief Justice of India Dipak Mishra at a function in New Delhi on December 3.

Justice Kurian Joseph, who retired from the Supreme Court on November 29, has come out with a startling allegation that the former Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra, was being remote-controlled and that he was allocating cases to judges with political bias.  He has also claimed that there have been several instances of external influence on the working of the Supreme Court, among them in the allocation of cases to benches headed by select judges and in the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and high courts.  

Justice Kurian Joseph was one of the four Judges who held the historic press conference on January 12 against Dipak Misra and cautioned that democracy was in danger.  The other three judges were Justice J. Chelameswar, since retired; Justice Ranjan Gogoi, now Chief Justice of India; and Justice Madan B. Lokur. The four judges had also released a copy of the letter they had written to the then CJI seeking remedial steps to correct the perception that as master of the roster he was allocating cases to “preferred judges”. 

While Justice Chelameswar refused to be drawn into the specifics of the grievances he and the other three judges had against Dipak Misra (he has reserved them for a book he is writing), Justice Kurian Joseph’s allegations are likely to fuel the debate on the role of the CJI as master of the roster. 

Justice Kurian Joseph, in his interview to an English language daily, also said that the “minority tag” was a hindrance to career progression despite his merit, thus drawing attention to a less-known aspect of recruitment of judges by the Supreme Court’s collegium. Justice Joseph was on the Constitution bench that, in 2015, struck down the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act enacted by Parliament as an alternative to the collegium system. However, he joined the other judges on the bench to direct reforms of the collegium system. He is now of the view that the collegium system has begun to show signs of reform and that there should be a small window to give representation to diverse communities, cultures and regions on the Supreme Court without sacrificing minimum merit.

The son of a clerk of the Kerala High Court, Justice Kurian Joseph rose to the august position of judge of the Supreme Court in March 2013 from humble beginnings. He used to go to school barefoot and got his first pair of slippers when he was in class 7. 

In his interview, Justice Joseph referred to “starkly perceptible signs of influence with regard to allocation of cases to different benches selectively, to select judges who were perceived to be politically biased”. Critics may say that these remarks border on contempt of court as they are likely to bring down the majesty of the court by casting aspersions on the independence of unnamed individual judges who were allegedly politically biased.

By implying that the former CJI was amenable to “external influence” in the allocation of cases to preferred judges, he has underlined the need to subject the court’s functioning to greater scrutiny in order to protect its independence as an institution. By resisting his temptation to go public on these issues before retirement, he did seek to prioritise institutional integrity over the need to strengthen its credibility as an institution. Such debates outside the court are welcome, as they throw light on the court's internal functioning, which has remained opaque all these years.

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