Supreme Court needs a transparent list, says former SC judge Oka

The Chief Justice of India, as the “Chief Justice”, has the administrative power to set up courts and allocate judicial work among them. File | Photo credit: Sushil Kumar Verma

Former Supreme Court judge Abhay S. Oka said on Tuesday (Oct 27, 2026) that the list system followed by the Supreme Court needs to be overhauled to bring more transparency in allotment of cases and eliminate scope for “manual intervention” in their list.

Mr. Oka pointed out that several chambers of the Supreme Court are assigned the same categories of cases according to the list, making it difficult for a litigant to know which court a freshly initiated case will ultimately be listed first. According to him, the practice leaves room for human intervention in deciding where to file a case.

“The purpose of the schedule is to ensure that manual intervention in the list is eliminated. But when the same entity is assigned to multiple benches, the case may go to five different benches. Who then decides to which bench the freshly filed application is referred – the Chief Justice of India or the registry officer? The fact remains that the listing of cases is done manually,” he said.

Mr Oka was delivering the keynote address at an event on ‘Accountability of Supreme Court and High Court Judges’ organized by the Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms (CJAR) in New Delhi.

The Chief Justice of India (CJI), as the “Chief Justice”, has the administrative power to appoint benches and allocate judicial work among them. However, Mr. Oka said the current system makes the Supreme Court too dependent on the office of the Chief Justice in matters of lists and allocations.

“The Supreme Court is too focused on the Chief Justice. The Supreme Court will become more favorable to the litigants if it introduces a proper list at par with the High Courts, so that manual intervention by the CJI will be ruled out,” he said.

When compared to the High Courts, Mr. Oka said that several administrative decisions there are taken by committees constituted by the respective Chief Justices, which brings an element of collective decision-making to the exercise of administrative powers.

“Look at the administrative side of the High Courts. Some decisions are taken by High Court Committees set up by the Chief Justice. There is a kind of administrative accountability in the High Courts because there is a collective process that ensures that all administrative powers are not concentrated in the hands of the Chief Justice,” he said.

On the judicial appointment process, Mr. Oka also called for greater transparency in the functioning of the collegial system to enhance its credibility.

“I strongly believe in the collegium system. If there is no better system, we should not replace it. But the collegium must operate transparently. Transparency must be in the process that is followed,” he said.

Published – 28 Oct 2026 0:25 AM IST