Integrity Score 405
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My Years in the Supreme Court continues...
The function in the Supreme Court was attended by the Prime Minister of India, and the Chief Justices of all the High Courts who had been invited for the occasion. The Advocates-General of the various States and Attorney-General of India also attended.
Under the new Constitution, the Supreme Court was to comprise eight Judges including the Chief Justice. The Court, therefore, needed two more Judges. Mr. Justice Vivian Bose, who was then Chief Justice of the Nagpur High Court, was appointed as the seventh Judge and Mr. Justice Chandra-sekhar Aiyar, a retired judge of the Madras High Court, as the eighth Judge. These eight Judges therefore constituted the first bench of the Supreme Court of India, a very cohesive and friendly team.
The abolition of the right of appeal to the Prime Council had transferred all the pending cases to the Federal Court in I947.
When the Constitution of India came into force on 26 January, I950 the Federal Court gave place to the Supreme Court. All the cases pending before the Federal Court stood transferred to the Supreme Court. When one of these cases came up before the Supreme Court, my learned brothers held that they were, under Article 364, debarred from proceeding any further in the case as it concerned a dispute arising out of an agreement entered into between the Government of India and the ruler of a State.
The minority, however. hold that notwithstanding this bar to its jurisdiction, the Supreme Court should hear the case as the Federal Court had earlier been seized of it and Article 135 had vested jurisdiction and power to hear such cases in the Supreme Court.
To be continued...