Supreme Court again sees discord between senior judges, Justice Arun Mishra

NEW DELHI: A day after being criticised by a Supreme Court (SC) bench for a bench he headed overturning a land acquisition verdict, Justice Arun Mishra has asked the Chief Justice of India to constitute a third bench to decide on the validity of the verdict. A three-judge SC bench, headed by Justice Arun Mishra, had on February 8 overturned a 2014 SC judgment to do with compensation to land-owners, mainly farmers, for land acquisition.

The judicial propriety and discipline of this bench – a three-judge one -overturning the 2014 verdict was criticised yesterday by another SC bench. The critical bench said the 2014 matter should have been referred to a bench of a larger size, and not decided by a three-judge bench. “Whether it is judicial indiscipline or not has to be decided by a larger bench,” said Justice Arun Mishra. whose verdict on land acquisition was criticised for setting aside earlier verdict of co-ordinate bench of same strength & not referring case to larger bench. The bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra had overturned the 2014 verdict saying it was given ‘per incurium’, which means without taking into full account facts and law. Interestingly, the 2014 verdict was delivered by a bench of Justices RM Lodha, Madan Lokur and Kurian Joseph. And two of them, Justice Lokur and Joseph were among those who last month protested the CJI’s decision to assign PILs to do with the alleged suspicious death of judge B H Loya to a bench headed by “junior judge” Arun Mishra.