SCBA President defends CJI DY Chandrachud; urges him to ignore senior lawyers questioning listing of cases

Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) president and Senior Advocate Dr Adish C Aggarwala has hit out at senior lawyers writing open letters to the Chief Justices of India (CJI) against alleged infirmities in the listing of cases at the apex court..In a letter addressed to CJI DY Chandrachud dated December 7 (Thursday), Aggarwala said that such letters which make wild and imaginary accusations at the behest of influential litigants, should be ignored."The assignment of cases is not open to question on the judicial or the administrative side and, as a corollary, it is neither required to be by way of a speaking order nor is it required to be justified by responding to any person calling it into question. The writing of such letters is therefore malicious, and calculated to embarrass the Administration. The time has come where one should put an end to the practice of writing of such letters," the letter added. .By putting a stop to such a practice, the interests of the Bar and the administration of justice will be subserved, the SCBA head wrote."It is essential to curb every attempt to scandalize the court mechanisms with insinuations and falsehood, aimed at mischievously shaking the confidence of the public in our courts.".The SCBA president also praised the incumbent CJI for giving confidence to younger members of the bar to argue cases, which may have invited the ire of senior lawyers who write such open letters."Those who are unable to afford unrealistically high fees are also enthusiastically seeking justice and are being given a fair hearing, and relief as per the merit of their case. Perhaps the said treatment at par of younger members of the Bar has not gone down well with a few senior lawyers who have started making concerted efforts to overawe this system.".The letter further makes a fervent appeal that CJI Chandrachud ignore such self-serving and malicious, motivated and dubious attacks on the independence of the judiciary."If the Chief Justice of India succumbs to such pressure tactics, it would sound a death knell to the independence of this great institution at the hands of certain vested interests," the letter stated..The issue of listing of cases before the Supreme Court has recently garnered attention.Advocate Prashant Bhushan on Wednesday wrote to the Supreme Court Registry raising grievance over the allegedly arbitrary breach of listing rules when it came to listing certain cases. Senior Advocate and former SCBA president Dushyant Dave too had recently written to CJI DY Chandrachud expressing anguish over the listing of sensitive cases.In an open letter addressed to the CJI, Dave claimed that many cases which were being heard by certain benches, were shifted out and listed before other benches. This, Dave claimed, was in violation of the Supreme Court Rules and the Handbook on Practice and Procedure of the Court, which govern listing of cases.He had added that such a practice does not augur well for the institution, and thus pressed for corrective steps to be taken.Dave had in November remarked in open court that cases earlier heard by a bench led by Justice Aniruddha Bose were wrongly being transferred to a bench led by Justice Trivedi, who is junior to Justice Bose.Notably, the case concerning judicial appointments was recently deleted from the bench of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul who had been hearing the matter.Justice Kaul himself was not impressed by the same, and clarified on December 5 that he did not have any in the deletion of the matter from his list..[Read Aggarwala's letter]