Plea unilaterally listed by SC official

Plea unilaterally listed by SC official

Context:

Noted civil rights lawyer Prashant Bhushan has approached the Supreme Court for a declaration that a defective contempt petition against him was unilaterally listed by the court’s Secretary General for judicial hearing before a Bench led by Justice Arun Mishra.

News:

The contempt petition was filed by Mahek Maheshwari against Mr. Bhushan’s tweet on a photograph of Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde on a motorbike.
This tweet and another one by him about the Supreme Court led to Justice Mishra Bench initiating suo motu contempt proceedings against him.
Two days later, the same Bench resumed hearings in a 2009 contempt case.
This case concerned Mr. Bhushan’s remarks about the judiciary in an interview with Tehelka magazine.

Issue

Mr. Bhushan wants both these orders to be recalled, or, in the alternative, be heard as and when physical court hearings resume.
In his petition, Mr. Bhushan contended that the Supreme Court Rules, 2013, required the defective contempt petition to be returned to Maheshwari. Instead, the Secretary General placed the case before a Bench of Justices Mishra, B.R. Gavai and Krishna Murari for hearing.
He said the plea filed by Maheshwari was defective as it did not have the prior consent of the Attorney General or the Solicitor General. And that the Secretary General’s action was “unconstitutional, illegal, void and non-est”.
Bhushan has said that the action of the Secretary General was illegal and amounted to usurpation of the role of the Chief Justice of India as the ‘Master of the Roster’.

Source: TH

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