By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: In recent months, many cases with crucial political ramifications have been referred to Justice Arun Mishra, the tenth senior-most judge at the Supreme Court. Beginning from the medical bribery scam case, Justice Mishra was made part of both the Constitution Bench and the three-judge bench that dismissed the need for a judicial probe into the issue.
It was also a bench of Justices Mishra and Amitava Roy who heard another case seeking a probe into the Sahara-Birla diary case. The court had said that the cases deserve dismissal.
One of the issues the four judges raised was that CJI Dipak Misra was selectively assigning cases to junior judges and not including them. “It is too well settled in the jurisprudence of this country that the Chief Justice is only the first amongst the equals, nothing more or nothing less,” the judges said.
“There have been instances where case having far reaching consequences for the national and the institution had been assigned by the Chief Justices of this court selectively to the benches of their preference without any rationale basis for such assignment. This must be guarded against at all costs.”
Early this week, the CJI recused himself from a case related to attaching the properties of Karti Chidambaram, son of former Minister P Chidambaram, in connection with the Aircel-Maxis deal case and sent it to the bench headed by Justice Mishra.
