Supreme Court needs transparent roster system, says former Judge Oka

Former Supreme Court judge Abhay S. Oka on Tuesday (October 27, 2026) said the roster system followed by the Supreme Court needs to be overhauled to bring greater transparency to the allocation of cases and eliminate the scope for “manual intervention” in their listing.

Mr. Oka pointed out that several Benches of the Supreme Court are assigned the same categories of cases under the roster, making it difficult for a litigant to know which Bench a freshly instituted case would eventually be listed before. The practice, he said, left room for human intervention in deciding where a case would be listed.

“The object of a roster is to ensure that the possibility of manual intervention in listing is ruled out. But when the same subject is assigned to multiple Benches, a case can possibly go to five different Benches. Who then decides which Bench a freshly filed petition goes before — the Chief Justice of India or an official in the Registry? The fact remains that there is manual intervention in the listing of cases,” he said.

Mr. Oka was speaking at a discussion on judicial accountability organised by the Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms (CJAR) at the India International Centre in New Delhi.

The Chief Justice of India, as the “master of the roster”, has the administrative authority to constitute Benches and allocate judicial work among them. Mr. Oka, however, said that the present system made the Supreme Court overly dependent on the office of the Chief Justice in matters of listing and allocation.

“The Supreme Court is too much of a Chief Justice-centric court. The Supreme Court will become more favourable to litigants if it introduces a proper roster on a par with the High Courts, so that manual intervention by the CJI is ruled out,” he said.

Drawing a comparison with the High Courts, Mr. Oka said several administrative decisions there are taken by committees constituted by the respective Chief Justices, bringing an element of collective decision-making to the exercise of administrative powers.

“Look at the administrative side of the High Courts. Certain decisions are taken by committees of the High Courts constituted by the Chief Justice. In the High Courts, there is some kind of administrative accountability because there is a collective process, which ensures that all administrative powers are not concentrated in the hands of the Chief Justice,” he said.

Turning to the process of judicial appointments, Mr. Oka also called for greater transparency in the functioning of the collegium system to strengthen its credibility.

“I am a firm believer in the collegium system. Unless there is a better system, we should not replace it. But the collegium must function transparently. The transparency has to be in the process that is followed,” he said.