New Delhi: The second most senior Supreme Court judge, Justice Jasti Chelameswar said on Saturday that he was not "aware of any government response to memorandum of procedure" and that "some kind of a revisit was needed" on the way the court functions.
Union Law Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad had said in June 2017 that “work” on finalising the “revised memorandum of procedure” — a guideline for appointments to the higher judiciary — was still “in progress” and that "on some issues, the government had reached an agreement (with the Collegium).”
However, on Saturday, Justice Chelameswar, who is part of the SC Collegium, denied having any knowledge of the Centre’s response to the MoP.
"I am not aware of government response to the Collegium in terms of certain things to be put into Memorandum of Procedure. We have asked the government to tell us the reason behind a collegium recommendation being rejected but we are yet to hear from them," said the Supreme Court judge who is slated to retire later this year.
While recollecting the earlier claim that Justice Chelameswar had made in a letter written to the CJI on "selective appointment of cases to benches", the SC judge said that this problem was not new but had occurred before as well.
On being questioned whether the Jayalalithaa verdict was one such case, Justice Chelameswar replied in the affirmative and said, "Yes. Judgment was reserved for one year. What was the purpose? Didn't the assessment fail there?"
After Justice Chelameswar’s unprecedented press address along with his brother judges in January this year, the "master of roster theory" one of the most talked about, which later made the CJI adopt a new roster system.
However, the SC judge on Saturday said, "Such a power needs to be exercised with responsibility."
"Undoubtedly, the CJI has the authority to constitute the benches but every power needs to be achieved with some responsibility. It has to achieve some public good. Power cannot be exercised just because you have it," said Justice Chelameswar.
However, when asked as to why all the important matters like Aadhaar and Ayodhya were being handled by a CJI-led bench, which specifically excluded all the four judges who were part of the January press conference, the SC judge replied that he was not "interested" in any of those cases.
"You should be asking these questions to someone else. I am least interested in any of these matters. I bother about my contribution. I would be happy to do minimum work and retire in the next 29 days," said Justice Chelameswar.
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