Supreme Court Deprecates Judicial Officers Directly Approaching It For Service Disputes, Asks Them To Move HC Committees First
The Court also requested the High Court Chief Justice to sensitise the Committees to dispose of pending disputes soon.
In the All India Judges Association case, the Supreme Court recently deprecated the practice of judicial officers directly approaching it to redress their service-related grievances.
The Court surmised that this might be due to the failure of the High Court administrative committees to redress the issues in a timely manner.
Therefore, to avoid judicial officers approaching the Supreme Court at the first instance, a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana urged the Chief Justices of all the High Courts to sensitise their administrative committees. Earlier, the Court had directed the High Courts to constitute "Committee for Service Conditions of the District Judiciary" to deal with the grievances of the judicial officers.
In the recent order passed last week, the Court observed :
“This Court, at this juncture, is constrained to note that various judicial officers, whether in individual capacity or as a group, are approaching this Court at the first instance for redressal of their grievances. It appears to us that this has taken place, in the majority of cases, due to a lack of timely initiatives or redressive action by the Administrative Committees (or any other analogous Committee) of the respective High Court(s). We, therefore, request the Chief Justices of all the High Courts to sensitise their Administrative/other Committees to deal with the pending issues regarding service conditions of the judicial officers and take an appropriate decision.”
The aforesaid observation came by the Court while dealing with a batch of matters concerning service conditions of serving and retired judicial officers across different States.
The Court noted that judicial officers, either individually or through representative bodies, were approaching the Supreme Court at the first instance for redressal of their grievances. Therefore, requested the Chief Justices of the High Courts to consider pending issues relating to judicial officers' service conditions and take appropriate decisions.
The Court also granted a liberty to the aggrieved/affected judicial officers to approach the jurisdictional High Court, which shall, after considering the issue, if it finds that serving or retired judicial officers are entitled to a particular pay, benefit or other service-related relief, make the recommendation to the concerned State Government.
“It goes without saying that in case the High Court resolves that the judicial officers, serving or retired, are entitled to any particular pay or other benefits, such recommendation shall be forthwith made to the State Government. It is only if there is an inaction on the part of the State Government(s) in giving effect to such recommendations that judicial interference may be warranted. For that purpose, the affected/aggrieved judicial officers may approach the jurisdictional High Courts.”, the Court said.
Also, the registry was directed not to entertain any IA/MA in these matters till the identification of the pending issues and completion their categorization is completed by the Amici. However, the judicial officers or the representative bodies may submit their prayer to the issues with which the Court is seized of.
“In case a judicial officer/representative body seeks to make a prayer regarding an issue which this Court is already seized of through an existing application, they shall also be permitted to place their submissions regarding the same.”, the Court said.
The Court further clarified that where an earlier order requires a judicial officer or organisation to approach the Supreme Court for raising a particular grievance, the same may be done through an independent petition.
Such a petition, however, will not be entertained by the Registry unless an advance copy is supplied to the amici curiae. Senior Advocates Mr. Siddharth Bhatnagar and Mr. K. Parameshwar have been appointed as Amicus Curiae.
Cause Title: ALL INDIA JUDGES ASSOCIATION VERSUS UNION OF INDIA & ORS.