Justice Roy, CJI exchange banter on 'intellectual resources'

NEW DELHI: Justice Hrishikesh Roy, who has made it a habit to utter the last few words in a lighter vein after pronouncement of judgments by nine-judge benches led by CJI D Y Chandrachud , on Tuesday said he had both a compliment and a complaint. After the majority opinion ruled that material resources of community may not include every private property, Justice Roy said "the compliment is that SC's intellectual resources are also material resources" and that the CJI had "exercised it profusely" over the last few months.

The CJI has authored lengthy majority judgments in all three cases before the nine-judge benches - right of states to tax royalty on extracted minerals, right of states to tax all kinds of liquor including industrial alcohol, and on Article 39(b) on Tuesday.

Elaborating on his "complaint", Justice Roy said, "Now that the CJI has three days left in office, let some material resource (intellectual resource) come from other benches." CJI Chandrachud took it as a compliment and thanked Justice Roy but in the next moment said, "So much of intellectual resource has come from other judges like Justice Nagarathna and Dhulia."