SC judges against CJI | Don't politicise the matter: Bar Council

The Bar Council of India (BCI) passed a resolution on Saturday — after a hastily conducted emergency meeting — asking political parties to avoid taking advantage of the situation that has arisen in the aftermath of a press conference held by four senior Supreme Court judges on Friday.

"We've given an opportunity to Rahul Gandhi and political parties to talk about our judiciary; it's unfortunate. On behalf of Bar Council of India, I request him and other political parties to not politicise the matter," BCI Chairman Manan Kumar Mishra said.

Stressing that the situation, though unprecedented, was an internal matter, Mishra said that the council had unanimously decided to form a seven-member delegation that will meet the rest of the apex court judges and find a solution to this unique crisis.

"The judges should not have gone to public with the issue. There are enough mechanisms to address this inside the house. We discussed the contents of the letter and have decided to form a seven-member delegation that will meet all judges, that is all judges except the Chief Justice of India and the four judges who wrote the letter," he said.

Cracking the rift wide open, on Friday, four judges of the top court — ranking second to fifth, held an unheard of press conference to speak against the administration of the apex court under the aegis of CJI Dipak Misra.

"We want that the matter be solved at the earliest," the BCI Chairman said.

Suggesting that the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) — the main bone of contention among the judges — needed to be finalised at the earliest, Mishra felt that it was not "that big a matter to be brought in public."

Senior Advocate Vikas Singh, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) however urged the full court to look into the concerns raised in the press conference on Friday. Singh further suggested that the allegations raised by the dissenting judges were not substantial and the press conference was "ill-planned".

Singh however, further sought for a change in the roster on Monday and urged all PILs and all listed cases to be transferred to the courts of the top 5 judges, ie, the CJI and the four dissenting judges.