New Supreme Court Roster: Five senior-most judges to hear PILs

A new Supreme Court roster is set to be implemented from July 1, 2019, when the Supreme Court reopens after the summer break. A notable change brought about by the latest change in Bench portfolio is that the jurisdiction over Letter Petitions and Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has now been allocated to Benches headed by the five senior-most judges of the Supreme Court. When the roster system was introduced in February last year, then Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra had allocated PIL matters to be exclusively heard by the CJI Bench. After CJI Ranjan Gogoi assumed office, he allocated a part of the PIL jurisdiction to the Bench headed by Justice (retired) Madan Lokur. As per the latest roster, however, PIL matters will now be heard by the Benches headed by CJI Gogoi and Justices SA Bobde, NV Ramana, Arun Mishra and RF Nariman. Justices Bobde, Ramana, Mishra and Nariman will hear PILs assigned to them by the CJI. Further, election matters, which were vested exclusively with the Bench headed by the CJI, will now be shared with the Bench headed by Justice Bobde. The CJI's roster subjects largely remains unchanged, save for the inclusion of matters relating to Mines and Minerals and the exclusion of Ordinary Civil Jurisdiction. Jurisdiction over ordinary civil matters will now be shared by the remaining Benches of the Court. Another notable highlight is that the subject of Ecological Imbalance, previously dealt with by the Bench headed by Justice (retired) Lokur no longer finds a mention in the roster while the social justice matters, which were also exclusively dealt with by Justice Lokur, will be handled by the CJI Bench. Matters relating to Contempt of Court will be placed before the Benches headed by Justice Arun Mishra and Justice UU Lalit besides the CJI. Justice Rohinton Nariman who dealt with a good majority of Company Law and Insolvency cases earlier will no longer hear the same. Cases on Company Law, SEBI and RBI have now been assigned to the CJI and Justice Arun Mishra. As per the newly published roster, two more judges will now head Benches at the Supreme Court - Justices MM Shantanagoudar and Abdul Nazeer.