New Delhi: New Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi has regretted the manner in which the Supreme Court has entertained all kinds of cases in the recent past.
According to the chief, "anybody can walk in and get an order from this Court”.
During court proceedings on Thursday, the CJI lamented that the top court has burdened itself with the cases that are based completely on facts and various fora have already arrived at the same conclusion.
"My brothers are saying the same thing. Shouldn't we entertain only such cases that have constitutional importance...or cases about rights of people and extraordinary in nature," remarked the CJI after having a word with the fellow judges on the bench, Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph.
Justice Gogoi added where is the justification for the Supreme Court to engage itself with a case for more than a decade when the issues have been settled right from the municipal corporation till the high court.
"We should go by the appellate Court's views in such matters," said the CJI.
The observations came when the bench took up for final hearing a petition filed by a group of residents from Mumbai's Nariman Point against construction and operation of a commercial building and a parking lot in the vicinity.
The bench noted that the construction was over in 2002-2003 and not just that all the authorities below had decided against the residents, they have not shown through any evidence how the operation of the building made them suffer. The Court dismissed their case.
Just before this case, the bench had taken up another case relating to allocation of petrol pumps under discretionary quota. The Supreme Court had ordered for cancellation of all illegal allocations in 1996-97.
In case of one allocation, the Delhi High Court had dismissed a plea against issuance of a show cause notice for cancellation of a pump allocated to one Manju Kumari. She challenged this order in the top court and the appeal remained pending for over ten years.
On Thursday, when the bench asked the lawyer to read from the show cause notice, he expressed apology saying the show cause notice is not in the petition.
Justice Gogoi was anguished. "What is happening in this Court. Anybody can come in and get an order. And on the basis of this order, he or she can go on for 20 years," said the judge.
He pointed out that the foundation of the appeal in the Supreme Court was the show cause notice but the petitioner did not care to put that on the case file. The bench then dismissed the appeal.
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