‘Master of the Roster’ refers to the privilege of the Chief Justice to constitute Benches to hear cases.Power is increasingly being centralised with the CJI. It calls for reform that brings accountability and transparency to the office without compromising on judicial independence.

Recent controversy on Master of roster :

• The privilege was emphasised when a Constitution Bench, led by the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, declared that the Chief Justice is the master of the roster and he alone has the prerogative to constitute the Benches of the Court and allocate cases to the Benches so constituted and no Judge can take up the matter on this own, unless allocated by the Chief Justice of India, as he is the master of the roster.

Reaction to master of roster :

• In an unprecedented event in the annals of the judiciary four of the senior-most judges expressed concern about the manner in which the Chief Justice of India was administering the Court and released a letter that they had written to him in which they had mentioned that all judges of the Supreme Court are equal when it comes to hearing and adjudicating cases.However, with respect to the administration of the Court, the chief justice is the “first among equals”

Centralization of power in the office of CJI/Drawbacks of master of roster :

• Preferential assignment of cases : The chief justice decides when a case may be listed for hearing, and she also decides which judges will hear it. This model is unacceptable as there have been instances where cases having far-reaching consequences for the nation and the institution had been assigned by the Chief Justice of this Court selectively to the Benches “of their preferences” without any rational basis for such assignment.” Ex : Justice Chelameswar's Bench, which heard Ms. Jaiswal's for which Chief Justice Misra
  constituted this five-judge Bench.
• Conflict of interest : The Chief Justice kept a disproportionate number of important cases for himself, including all PIL and all social justice cases, which can include many landmark cases. Ex: In the Prasad Educational Trust case, although allegations of bribes paid to fix the outcomes of Supreme Court cases implicated Chief Justice Misra, he nonetheless listed the case in front of himself and several relatively junior Justices.
• The roster aggregates all important cases to the Chief Justice of India — politically sensitive cases, all fresh public interest litigations, social justice matters, contempt of court matters, matters dealing with appointment of constitutional functionaries, among others
• Clarity and transparency : It is unclear how the roster was prepared, which dramatically reduces the clarity and transparency provided.
• Judicial corruption : It not only cuts against the rule of law and fundamental fairness, but also implicates broader concerns of judicial corruption.
• The Chief Justice of India is only one among equals, with the power to judiciously exercise an important role of constituting benches. This authority cannot be used in an autocratic manner defying all norms of equity and justice and in disregard for principles of neutrality, impartiality and transparency.
• Personal interpretation : the Court’s habit of sitting in multiple small benches has undermined the gravitational pull of precedents This means that when a judge surveys the legal landscape before her, she finds that it gives her greater room to effectuate a personal
  interpretive philosophy than she might otherwise have. Ex :Two Supreme Court benches were hearing cases involving the death penalty. One of these benches confirmed virtually every death sentence, while the other commuted most of the cases before it. The question of whether a person lived or died, then, depended upon the lottery of which bench his case came before or — in the Indian legal system — which bench the chief justice assigned it to.
• Judicial evasion: This means that “in the normal course of things”, a petition will take many years to be heard and decided. The chief justice, however, has the power to “list” cases for hearing. Given the huge backlog, this simple administrative function becomes a source of
  significant power. Ex: the government’s demonetisation policy was challenged in the Supreme Court on multiple grounds The Supreme Court is yet to hear this case. In the meantime, the policy has been implemented in its entirety, and any judgment the Court would now render would be purely academic thus effectively deciding a time-sensitive case in favour of one party by simply not hearing it.

Unfortunately, this progressive centralisation of power within the office of the chief justice has not been accompanied by a parallel strengthening of the accountability of this office which are need to be bought in with following Reforms:

• Global best practices : The Indian Supreme Court could follow the model of the highest courts of peer nations, which allocate cases in a variety of different ways. For example, in the United States, although the Supreme Court only hears cases before all nine justices, lower Courts of Appeal hear cases in randomly drawn panels In the High Court of Australia, the Chief Justice proposes a roster of no less than two justices, but this power of assignment is recommendatory and not determinative.
• Subject-wise division : A just and fair roster must be one that is divided subject-wise among judges according to their experience and expertise in those subjects.
• Collective decision-making : Politically sensitive matters should be before the five senior judges of the Supreme Court.
• Use of technology : Among them, the allocation of individual cases must be by random computer allocation not by the individual decision of any human.
• A tenured career registrar to assign cases as seen in United Kingdom.

Conclusion :

• History tells us that institutions that become over-reliant upon single individuals inevitably decay. The structural problems pointed out above remind us that if we are to prevent that decay in one of the most vital institutions of our democracy, the only way out is meaningful reform that brings accountability and transparency to the office of the chief justice, without compromising on judicial independence.