Saturday saw the Supreme Court constitute two separate Benches, one after the other, to hear a plea by activist Teesta Setalvad for interim protection from arrest, sending a strong signal that questions of personal liberty cannot wait after the weekend.
A Bench of Justices A.S. Oka and P.K. Mishra heard the case first on Saturday evening, but could not reach a decision. The case was referred to a larger Bench. The Chief Justice of India did not wait for another day, and promptly constituted a three-judge Bench of Justices B.R. Gavai, A.S. Bopanna and Dipankar Datta to hear Ms. Setalvad’s petition the same night.
Justice Gavai, when lawyers apologised for “disturbing” them on a Saturday, said “we still have Sunday to read up cases scheduled for Monday [July 3]”. Monday is the first working day after the summer vacation and Justice Gavai’s Bench has 67 cases listed before it.
Whether a case deserves to be listed urgently during the weekend in the top court is entirely the Chief Justice of India’s discretion. Public impact of a particular case, political sensitivity involved, dire risk to a guaranteed right may be some of the factors which guide judges to list a case on a weekend.
The past few years have seen Special Benches constituted during the weekend in the top court to hear cases dealing with subjects as varied as personal liberty, demolition of a building, pollution in the national capital, State politics and even sexual harassment accusations against a sitting Chief Justice of India.
On February 4, a Saturday, a Bench of Justice (now retired) V. Ramasubramanian and Justice Hrishikesh Roy had held a special sitting to hear a petition challenging an interim order of the Calcutta High Court to demolish a building.
A Special Bench of Justices M.R. Shah and Bela M. Trivedi had assembled on a Saturday, October 15 last year, to suspend a Bombay High Court decision to discharge G.N. Saibaba, a 55-year-old wheel-chair bound academic, in a case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
A Bench led by then Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana had assembled on November 13, 2021, also a Saturday, to urge the Centre and the Delhi government to take “emergency measures”, even proposing a two-day lockdown, to bring air quality back to normal in the capital. The court had remarked that people were forced to wear masks even at home.
Leave alone Saturdays, the judges were not spared their Sunday when a three-judge Bench on November 24, 2019 (a Sunday) had heard an urgent petition filed by the Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Shiv Sena against the swearing-in of BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis as Maharashtra Chief Minister the previous day.
But it has not always been a litigant pressing for a hearing on a weekend.
On April 20, 2019, the then Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi presided over an “extraordinary” hearing to examine allegations of sexual harassment published against him by online news portals.
