Senior 4 kept out of bench

R Balaji, TT, 15 January 2018, New Delhi: A notification listing the cases a five-judge constitution bench will hear from Wednesday seems to suggest that Friday's revolt by four senior judges on the way key cases are being allocated has had little impact.

Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra will head the constitution bench that will hear as many as eight cases, including challenges to the constitutional validity of Aadhaar and that of a law that criminalises homosexual acts between consenting adults.

Besides Justice Misra, the other judges on the bench are Justices A.K. Sikri, A.M. Khanwilkar, D.Y. Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan -numbers 6, 17, 18 and 19 in seniority among the apex court's 25 existing judges.

On Friday, Justices J. Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B. Lokur and Kurian Joseph - the four senior-most judges after the CJI - had publicly insinuated that Justice Misra was assigning key cases to relatively junior, handpicked judges to influence the outcomes.

The notification by the Supreme Court registry was issued on Friday - the day of the revolt - but formally uploaded only on Monday, amid claims by a top lawyers' body and the attorney-general that the differences had been resolved amicably.

One of the key grievances of the dissident judges was the assignment of a politically sensitive petition seeking a probe into CBI judge B.H. Loya's death to Justice Arun Mishra, 10th in seniority. Justice Mishra remains on course to take up the case on Wednesday.

According to Monday's notification, the first case to be heard by the constitution bench is the one on Aadhaar's validity, challenged on the ground that the collection of details such as fingerprints and iris scans infringes on a citizen's privacy.

Only after completing the hearing of the case, likely to take at least three weeks, will the bench move on to the next case and so on. Chronologically, the cases are:

• Joseph Shine vs Union of India (a re-look at the law that prosecutes men but spares women in adultery cases);

• Indian Young Lawyers Association vs State of Kerala (right of women of all ages to enter the Sabarimala temple);

• Navtej Singh Johar (gay and lesbian rights);

• Goolrokh M. Gupta vs Sam Rusia Chothia & others (whether a Parsi woman loses her religious identity after marrying a non-Parsi);

• Public Interest Foundation vs UoI (whether politicians should be debarred from elections as soon as a court frames serious criminal charges against them);

• Ms Shanti Fragrances vs UoI (a tax dispute); and

• New India Assurance Ltd vs Hili Multipurpose Cold Storage (P) Ltd (an insurance-related dispute).