Executive and Judiciary meet not to crack deals but to discuss judicial infra projects: CJI

More than one-and-a-half months after several Opposition political leaders criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to CJI DY Chandrachud’s residence here for Ganapati Puja, the latter has clarified that such meetings are not to crack deals as no pending cases are discussed.

“So, people think, what you were discussing about… The discussion is not about pending cases…The maturity of the political system lies in the fact that there is a great deal of deference to the judiciary even in the political class,” the CJI said during a discussion after delivering the inaugural lecture in the Loksatta Annual Lecture series on ‘Understanding Federalism and Its Potential’ at Mumbai University on October 26.

“People think there are deals being struck, but that is not the case. This is part of a robust dialogue between different arms of the government. We have three arms of the government – the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. We have to understand that the work of all the three arms is dedicated to one and the same goal namely, the betterment of the nation.

“And so long as we trust this process, I think we must accept that there has to be a continuing dialogue not in terms of the work which we do as judges, not at all, because in the work which we do as judges we are completely independent. But in so many ways there is an intersection between the work which the Judiciary does on the administrative side and the work which is done by the government on the administrative side,” the CJI stated.

Noting that such meetings between the heads of the Executive and the Judiciary were necessary, Justice Chandrachud said pending projects on judicial infrastructure, information technology and budgeting were discussed in such meetings.

“When such meetings happen… Trust me, when I say this… There is a great deal of maturity in the political system… In the course of those meetings, never, in my experience, I was the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court from October 2013 to May 2016 and the Lucknow Bench building was under construction… What was discussed was these aspects which were discussed. Never would the Chief Minister say that or talk about a pending case because there is a feeling and there is a realisation that (it) operates in a different sphere altogether.

“The administrative relationship between the high courts and the state governments is very different from the judicial work which the high court judges do and the same thing operates at the Central level in the administrative relationship between the Supreme Court of India and the government of the day as distinct from the judicial work which is done by the Supreme Court,” he explained.

Stating that dignitaries from the Judiciary and the Executive do visit each other on occasions such as Independence Day, Republic day, marriage or some bereavement, the CJI said, “I feel that it’s a part of a tradition that the Chief Minister of the state will come and visit or the Chief Justice will meet if there is a bereavement… But surely we must have the maturity to understand that this has no bearing at all on the judicial work which we do.”

He narrated how he had to meet the members of the parliamentary committee on law and justice as the head of the Supreme Court’s e-Committee and make presentations to them and again presented “our budget to the Union Government.”

Justice Chandrachud said, “The Union Government, the Ministry of Finance, the Department of Justice came to us and told us that you will have to represent your demands in a particular manner.”

The two ministries asked about input and output and as a result of the process, the e-court project was allocated Rs 7,000 crore which will be used for digitising the Indian Judiciary, the CJI added.