Sealed Cover: CJI DY Chandrachud on Monday refused to accept the sealed cover note, submitted by the central government related to disbursal of pension arrears to retired defence personnel under the one rank one pension (OROP) scheme. He said on Monday that the pratice of sealed cover goes against the tenets of fair justice.

A CJI-led bench, also comprising Justices PS Narasimha and JB Pardiwala, was hearing a petition of India ex-servicemen movement(IESM) on OROP issue.

“We need to put an end to this sealed cover procedure which is being followed in the Supreme Court because then the High Courts will also start following. And this is fundamentally contrary to the basic process of fair justice,” the CJI said.

The observation came when the Attorney general submitted a note with details sought by the Apex court in a sealed cover, claiming that it was confential.

“I am personally averse to sealed covers. What happens is, we see something he does not see. And we decide the case without showing it to him. This is fundamentally contrary to the judicial process. There cannot be secrecy in the court. The court has to be transparent,” CJI Chandrachud observed.

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It is noted that this is not the first time that CJI expressed his views on the practise of sealed cover reports. Last month during the hearing the petitions seeking a probe into the allegations levelled by Hindenburg Research against the Adani Group, the three-judge bench led by CJI, told  the solicitor general that the apex court wanted to maintain full transparency.

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“We would rather not accept the sealed cover suggestions from you for this reason; in constituting a committee which we want to do, we want to maintain full transparency. The moment we accept a set of suggestions from you in a sealed cover, it means the other side is not seeing them. Even if we don’t accept your suggestions, they will not know which of your suggestions we have accepted and which we have not,” IE quoted CJI Chandrachud as saying.

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