CJI J S Khehar asks FinMin to give details on major tax cases

Chief Justice of India Justice J S Khehar has written to the Finance Ministry to provide details of major tax cases pending with the Supreme Court, so that the decision in one case could have a cascading effect in disposing of several others.

Listing out initiatives taken by the apex court in reducing the pendency of cases, he said "so far initiatives that we have taken, we have tried to collect data even from the Finance Ministry relating to cases where, on tax issues, where there could be a cascading effect.

"So I wrote to the Secretary of the department asking him whether he can point out the cases where there is a cascading effect so that we decide one and lot of other cases of different levels can be disposed off."

Justice Khehar was speaking last night at a book release function at Rashtrapati Bhavan, which was attended by President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The CJI also said he had asked the finance ministry to find out whether there were certain cases which could have major financial impact so that, "rather than the matter pending in the courts, it will decide whether the government needs that money and gets it immediately, or doesn't get it. One way or the other."

In a polite snub to Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Justice Khehar said the judiciary was the body which passed orders and was functioning within its "boundaries".

"There is a difference of perception between the Union Law Minister and Union Finance Minister (Arun Jaitley). I don't blame either. The reason is that I do not know what to say —  Are you on the wrong side, or are we on the wrong side?

"Probably you are on the wrong side because it's us passing the order and that is the unfortunate part and sometimes it is not a pleasant experience to have an order set aside or altered or changed or modified. But for that, we assure you that we will keep within our boundary," he said.

Earlier, Prasad had said that all institutions of democracy — Executive, Legislative and Judiciary — should function within their limits.

"While upholding the majesty of our courts and independence of judiciary as integral to India's governance, which cannot be tinkered by any which ways, we also need to acknowledge that legislation must be left to those who are elected by the people to make such legislations and governance must be left to those elected to govern by the people of India," the Law Minister said at the function.

He said independence of judiciary is the basic structure undoubtedly, but "separation of power is also a basic structure".