Judiciary will resolve it: Govt

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 12

The government today decided that it would not intervene in the issue of four senior Supreme Court judges dubbing the situation in the top court as “not in order”, saying the judiciary as an institution has the strength and would resolve the matter itself.

Claiming the development as unprecedented, sources in the government said they would prefer to adopt a wait-and-watch policy, claiming time has a great role to play in this matter.

“Our judiciary is reputed all over the world, is independent and will sort out the matter itself,” Minister of State for Law PP Chaudhury said.

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The sources said since it was an internal matter of the judiciary, the government had no say in it and did not wish to interfere. But, they added the SC should settle the issue at the earliest as the faith of the people in the judiciary was at stake.

In an unprecedented move, four senior Supreme Court judges today called a press conference and said the situation in the apex court was “not in order” and many “less than desirable” things had taken place.

Luthra case on MoP in focus 

New Delhi: The four SC judges, in their letter to the CJI, referred the case of RP Luthra vs Union of India, which dealt with the ‘Memorandum of Procedure’, to raise questions about the assignment of cases “selectively” to preferred Benches without any rationale. 

The letter said “when the MoP was the subject matter of a decision of a Constitution Bench, it is difficult to understand as to how any other Bench could deal with the matter”. On October 27 last year, a two-judge Bench had agreed to examine the delay in finalisation of MoP for appointment of judges in the higher judiciary on judicial side and had sought a response from the AG. 

RP Luthra, a lawyer himself, had challenged the appointments in the absence of MoP, which was to be finalised in the wake of the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) verdict.

The letter, written two months back to the CJI, also mentioned about the verdict in the NJAC case, in which the Centre was asked to frame the new MoP in consultation with the CJI. PTI