Retired Supreme Court Justice Joseph Kurian has claimed that he and three other top court judges had held a press conference in January as they felt that outside forces were controlling then CJI Dipak Misra, The Times of India reported on Monday.
“There were several instances of external influences on the working of the Supreme Court relating to allocation of cases to benches headed by select judges and appointment of judges to benches headed by select judges and appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and the high courts.
“Someone from outside was controlling the CJI, that is what we felt. So we met him, asked him, wrote to him to maintain independence and majesty of the Supreme Court. When all attempts failed, we decided to hold a press conference,” Jospeh told The Times of India.
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Joseph said there were “perceptible signs of influence with regard to allocation of cases to different benches selectively”. He said it was Justice Chelameswar’s idea to hold the press conference, but all other judges agreed with him.
On November 30, a day after he retired, Jospeh had said he had no regrets about the unprecedented press conference on January 12, 2018 along with three other senior judges -Justice B Chelameswar, Justice Ranjan Gogoi, now the Chief Justice of India, and Justice M B Lokur.
In an interview to news agency ANI on Saturday, Joseph claimed that they felt the Supreme Court was not going in the right direction.
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"We pointed that the Supreme Court was not going in right direction. Many aspects we brought in the notice of the then Chief Justice (Dipak Misra) to put things on the proper path. Since there was no result, we thought there was no other option but to bring it to the notice of the nation.”
"There was one other reason. My position has always been that there are two watchdogs, one of which is the media. We came out to let there be an awareness that we have done our best. Despite barking the master is in deep slumber. So we decided to bite," he said.
