3-judge Supreme Court bench likely to hear plea today

New Delhi: A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court is likely to hear on Monday a plea claiming that alleged bribes were taken using the names of apex court judges promising to secure favourable settlement of a case.

A bench of justices J Chelameswar and S Abdul Nazeer had ordered on November 9 that the plea be heard by a five-judge Constitution bench of the senior-most judges of the apex court.

However, on November 10, in an unprecedented hearing, a five-judge constitution bench headed by CJI Dipak Misra had ruled that "no judge can take up a matter on his own, unless allocated by the chief justice of India, as he is the master of the roster".

It had over-ruled the order of Justice Chelameswar directing a Constitution bench hearing, saying, "If any such order has been passed by any bench, that cannot hold the field as that will be running counter to the order passed by the Constitution bench."

The plea filed by advocate Kamini Jaiswal is now listed for hearing before a bench of justices R K Agrawal, Arun Mishra and A M Khanwilkar at 3.30 pm tomorrow.

The hearing on November 10 had brought the tussle within top judiciary to the fore with the Constitution bench overturning the order of a two-judge bench to set up a larger bench to hear the graft case allegedly involving judges.

The showdown over the issue of supremacy of constituting a bench in which the authority of CJI, was allegedly undermined by a bench headed by Justice Chelameswar.

Justice Chelameswar, who is the senior-most judge after the CJI, had termed as "disturbing" the allegations levelled in a CBI FIR and had ordered setting up a bench of five top judges of the court as a petition by Jaiswal had claimed there were allegations against Justice Misra.

The CBI, in its FIR, lodged on September 19, has named several persons, including former Orissa High Court judge Ishrat Masroor Quddusi, as accused in an alleged corruption case.

Quddusi, who had also served as a judge in the Chhattisgarh High Court, was arrested along with Lucknow-based Prasad Institute of Medical Sciences' chairman B P Yadav, his son Palash Yadav and three others, for allegedly trying to settle a matter relating to a medical college barred from admitting new students.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court collegium will take a call on appointing 40 new judges to nine courts, a senior functionary said even as 106 judges have been appointed to the constitutional courts this year.

The law ministry has forwarded recommendations from nine high courts to appoint 40 judges to the Supreme Court collegium.

The high courts from where the recommendations have been received include Karnataka, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Madras and Tripura, the functionary said.

According to law ministry data, as on September 1, while the approved strength of judges in the 24 high courts was 1,079, there were 413 vacancies and these high courts were functioning with an effective working strength of 666 judges.

As per procedure, the three-member high court collegium recommends a name to the Supreme Court collegium. The recommendation is initially sent to the Law Ministry, which attaches an IB report about the candidate's record and forwards it to the SC collegium for a final call.

The collegium had recently said that the judiciary and not the IB, is a better judge of who should be part of the judiciary.

Commenting on the appointment of judges, law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said 126 judges were appointed in 2016 which is a record since 1989.

He said on an average 82 judges were appointed annually.

"As of now, 106 judges have been appointed in 2017. By December 31, we will surpass the 126 figure," Prasad said on Thursday at an event attended by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra.