CJI comes out with fresh roster on allocation of cases, first 3 benches to hear PILs

Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna has come out with a fresh roster for allocation of new cases to 16 benches and it has been decided that the first three courts presided over by the CJI and the two senior-most judges respectively will hear letter petitions and PILs.

The roster for the assignment of fresh cases was notified by the apex court registry under the order of the CJI and has come into effect from November 11.

The fresh petitions arising out of letters written by the citizens to the apex court and the new public interest litigations (PILs) will be heard by the benches presided over by the CJI, Justice B R Gavai and Justice Surya Kant, the two senior-most judges, respectively.

Besides the letter petitions and the PILs, subject wise, the CJI-led bench will be dealing with a maximum number of issues, including those related to social justice, disputes related to election of President, Vice President and other cases related to election of MPs and MLAS, habeas corpus matters and arbitration.

The benches, presided over by Justice Kant, will also hear election-related pleas.

Former CJI U U Lalit was allocating PILs to all the benches and this practice was discontinued by his successor D Y Chandrachud.

The subject-wise allocation of cases has been done for 16 senior judges who will be presiding benches.

Justice JB Pardiwala, who was sharing the bench with former CJI Chandrachud, will now be dealing with direct and indirect tax matters besides ordinary civil cases.

Besides the three senior most judges, including the CJI, the other 13 judges are justices Hrishikesh Roy, AS Oka, Vikram Nath, JK Maheshwari, BV Nagarathna, CT Ravikumar, MM Sundresh, Bela M Trivedi, PS Narasimha, Sudhanshu Dhulia, J B Pardiwala, Dipankar Datta and Pankaj Mithal.