Apex court issues fresh roster for case allocation
Days after Justice Sanjiv Khanna took over as the 51st Chief Justice of India, the Supreme Court Registry has issued a fresh roster for the allocation of new cases to 16 Benches of the Supreme Court. It has been decided that the first three courts presided over by the CJI and the two senior-most judges will hear letter petitions and PILs.
The roster for the assignment of fresh cases came into effect from November 11.
According to information made public by the Supreme Court Registry under the order of the CJI, fresh petitions arising out of letters written by citizens to the apex court and new public interest litigations (PILs) will be heard by Benches headed by the CJI, Justice BR Gavai and Justice Surya Kant, the two senior-most judges.
The CJI-led Bench will also be dealing with a maximum number of issues, including those related to social justice, disputes related to election of President, Vice-President; and other matters 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. Subject-wise allocation of cases has been done for 16 senior judges who will be heading Benches.
Justice UU Lalit, who served as the 49th CJI between August 27, 2022 and November 8, 2022, used to allocate PILs to all Benches. However, the practice was discontinued by his successor Justice DY Chandrachud.
The other 13 judges heading Benches were justices Hrishikesh Roy, AS Oka, Vikram Nath, JK Maheshwari, BV Nagarathna, CT Ravikumar, MM Sundresh, Bela M Trivedi, PS Narasimham, Sudhanshu Dhulia, JB Pardiwala, Dipankar Datta and Pankaj Mithal.
