15અમદાવાદ | શુક્રવાર, 8 જાન્ુઆરી, 2016

THE TIMES OF INDIA, AHMEDABAD FRIDAY, JANUARY 8, 2016 9TIMES NATION

Dhananjay.Mahapatra@timesgroup.com

New Delhi: Chief Justiceof India T S Thakur recent-ly conducted a first-ever in-ternal study to assess theindividual contribution of13 senior judges, headingtwo or three-judge benchesin the Supreme Court, in re-ducing pendency of cases.The conclusion: five of thejudges chipped away frompendency while the othersadded to it.

Tackling pendency wasalways seen as a collectivetask in the Supreme Courtand individual efforts ofjudges were seldom focusedupon.

But CJI Thakur, after tak-ing over on December 2,asked the SC registry to de-termine how each of the 13judges had performed interms of disposal of cases inthe past six months – fromJuly to December 2015.

However, the index maynot be an indicator of howthe judges performed. Onejudge may have got cases in-volving complex questionsof law or Constitutional is-

sues, requiring hearingsrunning into days and im-peding the bench from dis-posing of a large number ofcases, while others mayhave handled simpler casesallowing them to score high-er.

The study had just threeparameters: number ofcases listed before the judge,number of cases in whichnotice was issued (meaningthat many cases were intro-duced into the justice deliv-ery system) and number ofcases disposed.

The difference betweenthe number of cases a judge

introduced into the systemby issuing notice and thenumber of cases disposed ofshowed his disposal rate. Ifthe number is positive, thejudge disposed of morecases than he entertained; ifnegative, the judge contrib-uted to the pendency.

The list compiled by theregistry took into accountthe disposal by the judgestill 11.25am on December 12,2015. From the list compiled,only five of the 13 judgeschip away from pendency.They, in order of disposalranking, are – Justices A RDave, Ranjan Gogoi, CJI

Thakur, Madan B Lokur andJ S Khehar reduced penden-cy while the remainingeight contributed to it.

Justice Dipak Misra add-ed the highest number ofcases, followed by Justices PC Ghose, V Sen, Kurian Jo-seph, F M I Kalifulla, M Y Eq-bal, V G Gowda and J Chela-meswar. Justice Sen retiredon December 30.

Disposal of cases since2011 by the Supreme Courtalso saw wide fluctuations.In 2011, it was 36,472 cases;33,221 in 2012; 39,747 in 2013;43,437 in 2014 and 33,888 in2015.

Case DisposalRate: JusticeDave MostEfficient

SCORECARD Judge Listed

mattersNoticeissued Disposal Difference

Justice T S Thakur 5,259 237 305 -68

Justice A R Dave 3,419 54 432 -368

Justice J S Khehar 3,907 240 266 -26

Justice Dipak Misra 5,109 747 255 492

Justice J Chelameswar 5,377 275 208 67

Justice F M I Kalifulla 2,709 304 197 107

Justice Ranjan Gogoi 3,952 393 555 -162

Justice Madan B Lokur 4,402 252 303 -51

Justice M Y Eqbal 3,523 370 286 84

Justice V G Gowda 967 129 51 78

Justice V Sen (retd) 2,452 302 156 146

Justice P C Ghose 2,356 335 127 208

Justice Kurian Joseph 2,517 225 85 140

DISPOSAL OF CASES BY SC

36,472

33,888

33,221

39,747

43,437

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

CJI studies efficiency of judges

Tapan Susheel & Kautilya Singh TNN

Roorkee/Dehradun: In a big blow tothe two major political parties in Utta-rakhand, independent candidates havewon the maximum number of seats inthe recently concluded zila panchayatelections in Haridwar district, resultsof which were declared on Thursday.While Bahujan Samaj Party has won 16of the 47 seats, ruling Congress has hadto settle for a distant third position with11 seats. But what has come as a shockis that BJP has won just three seats.

The BSP camp was jubilant. “It(our victory) is a befitting reply bythe citizens of Haridwar district toCongress, which had tried to destroyus. We are sure we will constitute ourown board this time also,” said for-mer MLA Mohammad Shahjaj.

In 2010, too, the BSP had formed itsown board, with the support of inde-

pendents. The board was dissolved bythe state government in 2015 after asum of Rs 1 crore was seized by the Ut-tar Pradesh police near Bareilly onSeptember 15, 2015 from the official carof Anjum Begum, then chairperson of

the zila panchayat board. She has beenre-elected from Beldi Salhapur ward.

The BJP, which had won eightseats in the 2010 polls, said had thepolls been conducted on the partysymbol, things would have been dif-ferent. “In that case, we would haveregistered a good victory,” said BJPMLA (Haridwar) Madan Kaushik.

The party had hoped to repeat the2014 Lok Sabha elections successwhen the BJP’s Ramesh Pokhriyalhad won from Haridwar constituen-cy with a big margin of 1.77 lakhagainst Congress candidate and CMHarish Rawat’s wife Rawat RenukaRawat.

For the ruling Congress, whosemembers leaders had termed the Hari-dwar panchayat poll a “semi-final” be-fore the 2017 assembly elections, the re-sults have come as quite a jolt.

For the full report, log on towww.timesofindia.com

Jolt for Cong, BJP in Haridwar polls

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi/Mumbai: Mega-star Amitabh Bachchan, thebrand ambassador of Guja-rat Tourism, on Thursdayemerged as the Centre’s firstchoice to replace Aamir Khanas brand ambassador of In-credible India.

Others in the fray are ac-tors Akshay Kumar, DeepikaPadukone and Priyanka Cho-pra, sources said.

The search for a newbrand icon began after theUnion tourism ministry con-firmed on Wednesday that itwould not renew its contractwith the advertising agencywhich had picked Aamir asthe face of the campaign.

At the same time, sourcesclose to Bachchan said thatthe government was yet tomake a formal proposal to the73-year-old actor.

The speculation regard-ing his acceptance of the newrole might have been trig-gered by a tweet from an un-

verified Twitter account thatsaid he (Bachchan) “was will-ing to be the face of IncredibleIndia,” the sources said.

Bachchan’s “non-contro-versial image”, ministry in-siders said, has loaded thesearch in his favour, addingthat his promotion of tou-rism in Gujarat led to an “up-surge” in the state’s populari-ty as a holiday destination.

Aamir’s comment on“growing intolerance” in In-dia had created a huge contro-versy and inviting criticismfrom BJP. “Whether I ambrand ambassador or not, In-dia will remain Incredible,

and that’s the way it shouldbe,” he said on Thursday.

Union culture and tou-rism minister Mahesh Shar-ma told news agencies, “Ourcontract was with McCannWorldwide (ad agency) for‘Atithi Devo Bhava’ cam-paign. The agency had hired

Aamir for the job. Now thecontract with the agency isover. The ministry had nothired Aamir. Since the con-tract with the agency is over,automatically the arrange-ment with the actor no longerexists.”

Aamir responded sayinghe respected the govern-ment’s decision to “discon-tinue” with his services whilestating he never charged anymoney for the campaign. “It’sthe prerogative of the govern-ment to decide whether itneeds a brand ambassador,and if so, who that ambassa-dor should be,” Aamir said.

Incredible India: BigB may replace Aamir

Bachchan’s promotion of Gujarat makes him the favourite to succeed Aamir

Dipak.Dash@timesgroup.com

New Delhi: The consumer af-fairs department has called ameeting of all the stakeholdersin the cosmetics, toothpastesand toiletries sector next weekto understand their viewpointon enforcing the “red or brown”and green dots indication onpacked products specifyingwhether the product containsingredients that are of animalorigin.

Sources said that womenand child welfare minister andanimal welfare activist ManekaGandhi has been pushing forsuch signs on every item so thatthe consumer is aware of whatproduct he/ she is using. “Shewants the labeling should be oncosmetics, toothpastes and toile-tries. This will prevent vegetar-ians using any product with ani-mal ingredient unknowingly,”said a consumer affairs depart-ment official.

In June 2014, the departmenthad come out with a notificationmaking it compulsory for “ev-ery package containing soap,shampoo, toothpaste and othercosmetics and toiletries” to bearat the top of its principal displaypanel a red or a brown dot forproducts of non-vegetarian ori-gin and a green dot for productsof vegetarian origin.

But the Indian Beauty andHygiene Association had chal-lenged this notification in Bom-bay high court.

Animal originindicators oncosmetics ?

New Delhi: HimachalPradesh CM Virbhadra Singhon Thursday got relief fromthe Delhi HC after it clearedthe decks for him to get copiesof documents in the moneylaundering case. TNN

HC relief for HP CM

Lucknow: The ruling SamajwadiParty swept the UP district panchayatchairmen’s poll with a tally of 60 seatsout of possible 74 after Thursday’svoting. The party, which had won 36out of 38 seats, which had beendecided without contest, won 24 moreafter the voting, striking a blow to BJP,which lost in PM Narendra Modi’sconstituency Varanasi and state chiefLaxmi Kant Bajpeyi’s constituencyMeerut. TNN

SP sweeps UP zilapanchayat polls