Roster Set By Chief Justice Of High Court Binding On Companion Justices: Supreme Court
|The appeal before the Apex Court was filed by the Company Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Limited challenging the judgment of the Calcutta High Court.
The Supreme Court observed that the Chief Justice of the High Court has been vested with the power to set the roster and such roster is final and binding on all the ‘Companion Justices’ of the said Court.
The appeal before the Apex Court was directed against the judgment of the Calcutta High Court. In the course of deciding an intra-court appeal, directions were issued to the appellant-Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Limited to appoint 48 of the 51 writ petitioners on compassionate grounds.
Referring to the law laid down by the High Court in Sohan Lal Baid v. State of West Bengal (1990), the Division Bench comprising Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Rajesh Bindal held, “It needs no emphasis that the Chief Justice of the High Court, being the primus inter pares, has been vested with the power and authority to set the roster, as articulated in Sohan Lal Baid (supra), and such roster is final and binding on all the ‘Companion Justices’ of the said court. Plainly, therefore, the order dated March 11, 2024 and the impugned order are without jurisdiction.”
Senior Advocate Ranjit Kumar represented the Appellant while Senior Advocate Soumya Majumdar represented the Respondent.
Factual Background
The subject matter of the writ petition concerned the refusal to offer compassionate appointment by GRSE Ltd. to the writ petitioners. A Single Judge of the High Court by an order (under challenge in the intra-court appeal) had de-listed the writ petition awaiting a decision of this Court on the reference made to a larger bench in State Bank of India v. Sheo Shankar Tewari (2019) with liberty to mention after the reference was answered. The attention of the Apex Court was brought to an order passed by another Division Bench which was then seized of the intra-court appeal. It was pointed out that before such bench, the counsel appearing for GRSE Ltd. had agreed to the disposal of the writ petition by the appellate court. Pursuant thereto the records of the writ petition were placed before the Division Bench which proceeded to pass the impugned order finally disposing of the intra-court appeal as well as the writ petition in favour of the writ petitioners.
Reasoning
The Bench held that the Single Judge not having referred the writ petition to a bench of two Judges for hearing, the predecessor Division Bench was not quite correct in accepting the suggestion of the parties and agreeing to hear the writ petition without having any authorization from the Chief Justice in this behalf and more particularly bearing in mind the well-settled principle that ‘consent does not confer jurisdiction’.
“A judicial order based on consent of the parties, which is in the teeth of the Writ Rules and seeks to unsettle and even override the determination made by the Chief Justice, could not have vested jurisdiction in the appellate court to hear the pending writ petition. As a sequitur, the Division Bench which passed the impugned order could not have assumed unto itself the jurisdiction to decide the writ petition based on the earlier order dated March 11, 2024”, it said.
On a perusal of the facts of the case, the Bench found that as per the roster set by the Chief Justice, the determination was not given either to the predecessor Division Bench or to the Division Bench to hear writ petitions under ‘Service (Group VI)’ of the Classification List appended to the Writ Rules. It was also noticed that the determination to hear writ petitions relating to Group VI, as made by the Chief Justice, was given to single benches on the relevant dates. “On the face of such determination, neither the predecessor Division Bench nor the Division Bench of the High Court could have assumed jurisdiction to hear the writ petition premised on the legal position that they had jurisdiction to hear appeals from orders passed on writ petitions relating to Group VI”, it added.
The Bench also emphasized, “...any order which a bench - comprising of two judges or a single judge - may choose to make in a case that is not placed before them/him by the Chief Justice of the High Court or in accordance with His Lordship’s directions, such an order is without jurisdiction. In other words, an adjudication, beyond allocation, is void and such adjudication has to be considered a nullity.” The Bench thus set aside the impugned order and directed, “We order a remand, with the result that the writ petition shall stand revived on the file of the High Court. We request the Chief Justice of the High Court to assign the writ petition to an appropriate bench for its consideration and disposal, as early as possible, but preferably within six months from today…”
The Bench allowed the appeal while recording the statement of senior counsel appearing for GRSE Ltd. that till such time the writ petition is disposed of by the appropriate Bench of the High Court to which it is assigned by the Chief Justice, no appointment shall be made so as to render the writ petition infructuous.
Cause Title: Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Limited v. GRSE Limited Workmens Union & Ors. (Neutral Citation: 2025 INSC 363)
Appearance:
Appellant: Senior Advocates Ranjit Kumar, Brijender Chahar, Nidhesh Gupta, Ranjay De, AOR Ranjan Kumar Pandey, Advocates Sandeep Bisht, Yati Ranjan, Akash Dixit, Swati Bansal
Respondent: Senior Advocates Soumya Majumdar, AOR Swarnendu Chatterjee, Advocates Nilay Sengupta, Sujit Banerjee, Deepakshi Garg, Harshita Rawat, AOR Shreekant Neelappa Terdal