Justice UU Lalit talks about 3 areas he will focus on as CJI

Justice NV Ramana retired as the Chief Justice of India on Friday. The formal farewell ceremony also saw Justice UU Lalit talk about the three areas he will focus on after taking over as CJI.

Praising Justice Ramana for taking strides in judicial appointments and judicial infrastructure, Justice Lalit said that in his short tenure of 74 days, he intends to focus on three key issues. Justice Lalit informed the gathering of judges, lawyers and court staff that the three top issues he would be addressing are listing of matters, mentioning of urgent matters, and ensuring that at least one Constitution Bench is sitting for important matters.

With more than 490 cases pending before the Constitution bench, including five-judge, seven-judge and nine-judge bench matters, the CJI-designate has said that he would ensure the setting up of Constitution benches to take up the pending legal issues.

"I have always believed that the role of the Supreme Court is to lay down law with clarity and consistency. So that issues may get clarified expeditiously. We will strive hard to say that we will always have



at least one Constitution bench functioning throughout the year," said Lalit.

Further, Justice Lalit indicated that the administrative complications regarding listing of matters would be smoothed out.

"I had a word with registry officials, SCBA and SCAORA officials," said Justice Lalit in his speech.

"We will try hard to make listing as simple and transparent as possible. Number two- the area which is mentioning of urgent matters, I will certainly look into. Will have a word with all colleagues. Shortly, you will have a clear-cut regime where urgent matters can be mentioned before court," said Justice Lalit.

Recently, the Supreme Court has received several complaints regarding non-listing of matters and delay in listing of urgent matters. In his address to the court during the morning's ceremonial bench, CJI Ramana had also apologised to the Bar over this issue.

"I must admit that issues of listing and posting of matters is one of the areas on which I could not pay much attention. We were busy fire-fighting on daily basis," Ramana had said.