Former Delhi high court judge Justice Rekha Sharma delivered the following remarks at a seminar organised by
the Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms, in collaboration with The Wire and LiveLaw.

I am thankful to the organisers for having provided me with this opportunity to be with you all today. Though I am almost a stranger to the actual working of the Roster system in the Supreme Court, let me share my own little experience of what I have heard and observed. The subject has taken me back to the year I enrolled myself as an Advocate. That was the day my family looked at me with awe and amazement. It was because none of them except my father had ever seen a court room. My resolve to practice law was difficult for them to digest.

Knowing none, and with no brief, I would sit in some court room or the other, listen to the arguing counsel and comeback home briefless and with empty pocket. But, then, miracles do happen. It was a Friday. I saw an elderly lady lawyer getting up, bowing her head, and saying something. Two serious looking judges raised their heads, looked at her, “Dismissed”, said their Lordships. The lady lawyer passed by my seat, red faced, head jerking, murmuring something inaudible. While she lost her brief, it made my day. It carved my future. I followed her to her chamber, introduced myself, told her I was watching her great performance, and that I wanted to be her junior. She looked at me, asked me to have a seat, and agreed to take me as her junior.

For a long time, I would carry her bulky files, follow her from one court room to another, and became immune to the epithets, good or bad for the different Benches. However, one thing is clear to me.What was earlier being said in whispering tones, in present times is being talked openly. And, it is something called “Bench fixing”.

Though with the passage of time I became a busy lawyer, the Bench and its allure became overwhelming. I was selected for the Higher Judicial Service, and a few years later elevated to the Bench. However, somewhere in the back of my mind, the epithet “Bench fixing” kept haunting. And, to my surprise and dismay, I realized that though in the High Court, the Registry’s hands were clipped by the Roster System, that system too was not free from rat’s smell. And that smell emanated principally from the pen of the Chief Justice who was incharge of the Roster. None of the so-called Service Judges was ever assigned important constitutional matters, habeas corpus or other writ petitions involving important questions of law. All such cases went to judges directly elevated from the Bar. As if, the judges from the Bar were paragon of knowledge.

In Narasimha Rao’s bribery case which revolved around the interpretation of Article 105 of the Constitution, and involving not only the person who held the position of the Prime Minister, but........

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