Can’t micro-manage everything to render apex court dysfunctional: SC

The Supreme Court on Tuesday observed that it cannot run the country by micro-managing every issue, which in turn, can render the apex court “dysfunctional”.

The two most senior judges of the court, Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud and justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, flagged their concerns while hearing public interest litigation (PIL) matters, listed separately before their benches.

While the CJI-led bench was hearing a PIL relating to nationwide norms for captive elephants, justice Kaul was dealing with a 1985 PIL on environmental pollution.

Noticing a deluge of applications, interventions and tagged petitions in the matter relating to captive elephants, justice Chandrachud remarked that there may be a thousand issues in the country that merit attention, but the top court cannot render itself dysfunctional by hearing everything.

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“We have to make sure that the Supreme Court is not rendered dysfunctional by spreading ourselves too thin. With so many applications in one case, the Supreme Court eventually deal with these issues on an ad hoc basis... one application here; one application there. How can we run the country like this?” the CJI told senior advocate CU Singh, who sought to argue for his application pertaining to transportation of captive elephants from Assam to Kerala.

Justice Chandrachud stressed on the point that the Supreme Court judges must have a “broader functional understanding”.

“We cannot deal with or micro-manage everything... You have the high courts with judges equipped with exemplary wisdom and understanding of local conditions. Judges in high courts are peculiarly suited to taking a holistic view. And if they make egregious errors, we are here to correct their orders. But we cannot entertain everything here to make the Supreme Court dysfunctional,” the judge added.

The CJI declined to take up the applications raising individual issues, clarifying the court would rather hear the substantial issues concerning pan-India guidelines.

Similarly, justice Kaul, while hearing a bundle of application seeking relaxation of the court-mandated ban on use and import of petcoke, lamented that the Supreme Court has in such cases become the court of first instance where it is always flooded with applications.

“You cannot throw everything in our lap. That’s not the job of the Supreme Court. We cannot become the court of first instance and hear everything; every application and even matters that should ideally be a matter of policy decisions. Unfortunately, that’s what we have been asked to do in all these cases that have been pending for so many years and we are monitoring them,” rued justice Kaul.

Regretting that the parties have filed it more convenient to move an application before the top court instead of going to the authorities concerned, the judge said that it is time that the judges as well as litigants understand the true role of the highest court of the land and the understanding of the cases that it should devote its time to.

Justice Kaul, in his order, referred the matter to the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), noting that the expert body requires to take a comprehensive view as regard the availability and distribution of petcoke to various industries, including the steel industry.