Black letter day, say city's retd judges

Mumbai: Reacting to the decision of four senior Supreme Court judges to go public with their grievances against the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra on Friday, alleging that he allocated cases without following rules, some retired judges of the Bombay high court said SC judges should have refrained from criticising the CJI in public.

Former high court Justice V. G. Palshikar said that they (judges) should have refrained from going public. “This is a black day in the history of courts. This should not have happened,” he said, adding that the judges should have raised these issued in a chamber meeting in the Supreme Court.

“Whatever happened today makes it the golden day in Indian judiciary as the chief justices of different high courts and the SC have been misusing their powers in allotting assignments to judges,” said former justice B. G. Kolse Patil. He also said that the words used in the letter released by the judges revealed that they themselves were not happy with coming out in the media with their grievances. Having received no response to their letter, they were forced to take this step.

According to him, the judges have pointed at the presence of a serious problem in current administration of the SC. “Now it is the duty of the CJI to take all the judges into confidence and solve the problem.”