‘Race against time’: CJI-led bench takes up 4 key cases | India News

NEW DELHI: Facing tremendous time constraints in deciding constitutional issues in view of huge pendency of cases, a five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice UU Lalit on Tuesday suggested time-bound hearing of the cases for timely adjudication and asked lawyers to argue within the time allotted to them.
After assuming office, CJI Lalit has fast-tracked hearing of constitutional bench matters and four such cases have been listed before a bench headed by him. He admitted “it would be running against time” to decide those cases: his tenure which will end on November 8. Another five-judge bench will hear four other cases.
The CJI-led bench indicated that it would decide all four cases after hearing is concluded by October first week. The bench agreed to hear first the matter pertaining to validity of constitutional amendment to allow 10% reservation to economically weaker sections (EWS) in government jobs and educational institutions.

The CJI-headed bench, also comprising Justices Dinesh Maheshwari, S Ravindra Bhat, Bela M Trivedi and J B Pardiwala came to the decision after all parties agreed that the case is very important and should be given priority.
It said the second case in line of hearing relates to whether religion can be a ground for granting reservation and whether the Muslim community could be declared socially and educationally backward to grant them reservation. The court said these two cases are related to reservation so they will be heard first and then other cases would be listed.
The bench said it would try to conclude the hearing of one case in a week (7.5 hours). “There is tremendous time constraint. It would be race against time. We are in the hands of counsel and they should confine their arguments within a timeframe,” the bench said, hinting that proceedings before the Constitution bench should not go on and on like earlier and time-bound hearing be done.
The other two cases which would be heard by the bench include plea for setting up Courts of Appeal with exclusive jurisdiction to hear and finally decide appeals from high courts leaving the Supreme Court to decide only constitutional matters. The last case before the bench is to examine whether Sikh educational institutions in Punjab could be declared as “minority” institutions and permitted to reserve 50% seats for members of the community.
The bench appointed four lawyersas nodal counsel who would compile all the documents relating to the first two cases.
The court posted the case for September 6 to further chalk out modalities and time-frame for hearing the two cases and the final hearing would begin from September 13.
The other Constitution bench comprises Justices Indira Banerjee, Surya Kant, MM Sundresh, Hemant Gupta, Sudhanshu Dhullia. The cases it is looking into are: whether the criteria for selection can be altered by the authorities concerned in the middle or after the process of selection has started; case relating to the doctrine of precedent with respect to Supreme Court judgments; challenge to the prevalent practice of polygamy including nikah halala, nikah mutah and nikah misyar; and whether in exercise of power conferred under Article 161 of the Constitution, a policy can be framed, whereby remission can be granted by the Executive without placing records before the Governor?