Judges bribery case: 3-judge SC bench likely to hear plea tomorrow

The petition contends that alleged bribes were taken using the names of apex court judges for getting favourable order for a private medical college seeking relaxation in government order that barred from enrolling new students in medical courses.

The plea filed by advocate Kamini Jaiswal is now listed for hearing before a bench of justices R K Agrawal, Arun Mishra and A M Khanwilkar at 3.30 pm tomorrow.

A bench of justices J Chelameswar and S Abdul Nazeer had ordered on November 9 that the plea be heard by a five-judge Constitution bench of the senior-most judges of the apex court.

However, on November 10, in an unprecedented hearing, a five-judge constitution bench headed by CJI Dipak Misra had ruled that "no judge can take up a matter on his own, unless allocated by the chief justice of India, as he is the master of the roster".

The CJI-led bench had over-ruled the order of Justice Chelameswar directing a Constitution bench hearing, saying, "If any such order has been passed by any bench that cannot hold the field as that will be running counter to the order passed by the Constitution bench."

The hearing on November 10 had brought the tussle within top judiciary to the fore with the Constitution bench overturning the order of a two-judge bench to set up a larger bench to hear the graft case allegedly involving judges.

The case pertains to a medical admission scam following a government barring 46 medical colleges across the country from admitting new students for their courses citing sub-standard facilities on the campus.

The scam involves a retired high court judge, a havala operator, promoters of the trust which run the medical college and middlemen. The CBI, in its FIR, lodged on September 19, has named several persons, including former Orissa High Court judge Ishrat Masroor Quddusi, as accused in an alleged corruption case.

Quddusi, who had also served as a judge in the Chhattisgarh High Court, was arrested along with Lucknow-based Prasad Institute of Medical Sciences' chairman B P Yadav, his son Palash Yadav and three others, for allegedly trying to settle a matter relating to a medical college barred from admitting new students.

In the showdown over the issue of supremacy in constituting a bench, it was said that the authority of CJI Dipak Misra was allegedly undermined by a bench headed by Justice Chelameswar.

Justice Chelameswar, who is the senior-most judge after the CJI, had termed the allegations leveled in a CBI FIR as "disturbing" and ordered setting up a bench of five top judges of the court on the petition filed by Jaiswal, who claimed that there were allegations against Justice Misra.