New Delhi: Last December, the Supreme Court was hearing a challenge by Rajaram Bhartiya, a principal district judge in Madhya Pradesh. He had been suspended on November 19, 2025, when he was then due to retire on November 30. A separate Supreme Court order the next day extended the retirement age of judicial officers, pushing his superannuation to November 2026.The Supreme Court’s December 17, 2025 order in Rajaram Bhartiya v High Court of Madhya Pradesh records these facts, the stated concern about possible tampering with evidence and witnesses, and the liberty given to Bhartiya to make a representation against his suspension. It does not contain the cricketing phrase that subsequently acquired a life of its own.During the hearing, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant was reported to have warned against judges trying to “hit sixes” before retirement. Eight months later, according to Bar and Bench’s story, Supreme Court Justice Sandeep Mehta turned that metaphor inward. In letters concerning Rajasthan high court acting Chief Justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma, Justice Mehta reportedly wrote that Sharma appeared to possess a “licence to hit sixes”.The extraordinary feature is not simply that one judge has accused another. It is that a sitting Supreme Court judge appears to have invoked the judiciary’s own chain of accountability three times. On Wednesday (August 26), the CJI publicly confirmed in a press statement that Justice Mehta’s concerns were being examined at the “appropriate level” through the “established institutional mechanism”.India’s judiciary does have an in-house mechanism. The CJI’s statement only makes the gateway partly visible: it does not say whether it remains at the threshold-assessment stage or whether a formal in-house inquiry has been triggered.Acting Rajasthan high court Chief Justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma.Three letters, several allegationsBar and Bench reported on August 26 that Mehta wrote to the CJI on August 2, 10 and 17, seeking the appointment of a Chief Justice from outside Rajasthan and, ultimately, Justice Sharma’s transfer. It attributes to Justice Mehta allegations concerning case listings and the exercise of administrative authority.The allegations require separation. Some are reported as Justice Mehta’s own. Some are matters that other Rajasthan high court judges allegedly conveyed to him. Others arise from a separate complaint by advocate Pooja Tripathi. None becomes an established fact merely because it appears in correspondence attributed to a Supreme Court judge.The letters and complaint are not publicly available, and Justice Sharma has not publicly responded. The CJI has, however, said in the press statement that Justice Sharma must be given a fair opportunity to place his response before any conclusion is reached, and that the process will consider both Justice Mehta’s material and Justice Sharma’s response.Some surrounding facts are verifiable. In its March 28, 2023 resolution concerning Justice Sharma, the Supreme Court collegium recorded that he had sought repatriation from the Patna high court to his parent Rajasthan high court, citing poor health and inadequate medical facilities in Patna.The collegium said repatriation to Rajasthan was “not possible” and instead recommended his transfer to the Punjab and Haryana high court. Crucially, the resolution gives no reason for refusing Rajasthan and supplies no basis for treating the refusal as an adverse finding against him.The position subsequently changed. On May 26, 2025, the collegium, headed by the then-CJI B.R. Gavai, recommended Justice Sharma’s repatriation from the Punjab and Haryana high court to the Rajasthan high court.On September 26, 2025, the president, exercising the power under Article 223 of the Constitution, appointed Justice Sharma to perform the duties of the office of Chief Justice of the Rajasthan high court consequent upon Chief Justice K.R. Shriram’s retirement on September 27, 2025. The Department of Justice records Justice Sharma as acting Chief Justice with effect from September 28, 2025, and gives September 26, 2026 as his date of retirement.That acting arrangement also sits alongside a February 26, 2026 collegium policy stating that a judge proposed as Chief Justice should preferably be transferred two months before the vacancy to become conversant with the high court. It does not set a deadline for filling vacancies, but it underscores the collegium’s stated concern with continuity in high court leadership.The separate complaint described by Bar and Bench also contains allegations about names said to have been forwarded for elevation to the high court. But appointment power is not unilateral. The Supreme Court’s official account of the high court appointments process says a proposal is initiated by a high court collegium comprising the Chief Justice and the two senior-most judges, before passing through state, Union and Supreme Court collegium stages.The reported listing allegations are harder to test. Without the letters, case numbers, relevant roster directions and listing records, public material does not establish that any case was improperly assigned. That is precisely why the controversy must move from accusation to procedure.Roster power is not housekeepingIn State of Rajasthan v Prakash Chand (1997), the Supreme Court held that the Chief Justice is master of the roster, with the prerogative to constitute benches and allocate cases. Shanti Bhushan v Supreme Court of India (2018) reaffirmed that position.The arrangement prevents judges from choosing cases or constituting benches for themselves. Yet listing determines who hears a dispute, when it is heard and, sometimes, where. Administrative control can therefore shape the conditions in which judicial power is exercised.The question is not whether a Chief Justice should possess roster authority. It is what safeguards operate when its exercise is credibly questioned.What can the CJI actually do?The CJI is not the disciplinary superior of high court judges. In XXX v Union of India (2025), arising from the in-house proceedings involving Justice Yashwant Varma, the Supreme Court emphasised that the CJI does not exercise powers of superintendence over high courts or their judges. At the same time, it said the CJI bears a significant responsibility as the country’s foremost judicial officer when questions concerning judicial integrity arise.The CJI therefore occupies a pivotal position in judicial self-regulation without possessing ordinary disciplinary command. The in-house procedure, adopted by the Supreme Court’s Full Court in 1999 and reproduced and explained in Additional District and Sessions Judge ‘X’ v Registrar General, High Court of Madhya Pradesh (2014), provides the institutional mechanism for dealing with written complaints containing specific and verifiable allegations.The 2025 XXX judgment describes the gateway succinctly. The CJI must apply his mind to the complaint and supporting material. If he believes the matter requires a deeper probe, an in-house committee is constituted to investigate.That committee is engaged in fact-finding, not removal. Depending on its findings, the procedure can eventually lead to advice that the judge resign or retire voluntarily and, in the gravest category, to transmission of the report to the president and the prime minister.Removal is a separate constitutional process. Articles 217 and 218, read with Article 124(4) and (5) of the Constitution, permit removal of a high court judge only through the constitutionally prescribed parliamentary process for proved misbehaviour or incapacity. The Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968 regulates the investigation after the prescribed parliamentary motion is admitted. An in-house report does not itself remove a judge or compel parliament to begin removal proceedings.Transfer is different again. Article 222 of the Constitution permits a judge’s transfer from one high court to another. The Department of Justice’s published description of the transfer procedure says the proposal is initiated by the CJI in consultation with the four senior-most puisne Supreme Court judges.During the Justice Yashwant Varma controversy, the Supreme Court expressly maintained that transfer and an in-house inquiry were separate exercises. The Wire reported that distinction when the inquiry was initiated.That matters because Justice Mehta reportedly sought Justice Sharma’s transfer. Transfer can change an administrative situation. It cannot by itself determine whether misconduct occurred.The relief publicly reported from Justice Mehta’s letters is transfer, not a request for an in-house finding. That may address an immediate administrative problem but leaves the integrity allegation unresolved. Justice Mehta’s Rajasthan background matters too: he served on the high court from 2011 to 2023, while the transfer procedure contemplates views from Supreme Court judges positioned to speak about the high court concerned.The threshold is now partly visibleThe in-house procedure contains safeguards. The concerned judge’s response forms part of the preliminary process, and a full inquiry must conform to natural justice. The Supreme Court has said the process was designed to exclude favouritism, prejudice and bias.But the publicly available procedure prescribes no general deadline for the CJI’s threshold assessment. It creates no express entitlement in a complainant to an acknowledgment, a reasoned rejection or notification of the eventual outcome. Nor does it generally require disclosure that a complaint was screened out or taken to the next stage. There is an additional wrinkle in Rajasthan. Justice Sharma is an acting Chief Justice. Article 223 says that a judge appointed in that capacity performs the duties of the office of Chief Justice. The in-house architecture has procedures for complaints against high court judges and against high court Chief Justices, but does not expressly create a separate category for an acting Chief Justice.That need not disable the process. In Additional District and Sessions Judge ‘X’, the Supreme Court held that although the procedure should ordinarily be followed, the CJI has authority to “mould” it in an appropriate case to guard against favouritism, prejudice or bias. The court even contemplated the CJI himself assuming a preliminary role where involving the concerned high court Chief Justice would be inappropriate.Confidentiality, moreover, is deliberate. In XXX, the Supreme Court held that the in-house report is confidential and went further, saying that the entire process should be treated as confidential because one of its purposes is to ascertain the truth.The CJI has now echoed that rationale, saying the contents of the letters cannot be adjudicated in the public domain and that individual complaints concerning judges cannot be determined through competing claims in the media.There is a strong case for that protection. Judges can face strategic or motivated complaints. Publicising an untested accusation can cause irreversible reputational damage, inhibit candid peer scrutiny and turn internal disagreements into campaigns designed to pressure judges.A February 2026 parliamentary answer adds context: the CJI’s office received 1,102 complaints against sitting judges in 2025. Publicly escalating each complaint could itself become a means of pressuring judges.But confidentiality and procedural opacity are different things. The public need not see evidence, deliberations or an in-house report to ask whether allegations of unusual institutional weight have been assessed under an identifiable procedure.The retirement clockTiming sharpens the issue. The Department of Justice’s official judges’ list gives Justice Sharma’s retirement date as September 26, 2026, exactly one month after Justice Mehta’s letters became public. Until then, the acting Chief Justice continues to perform the duties of the office and exercise substantial judicial and administrative authority.The in-house procedure contains no general timetable ensuring that the threshold decision, much less an inquiry, will conclude before retirement. This proves neither delay nor misconduct in Rajasthan. It exposes a structural vulnerability: short remaining tenure, considerable administrative power and a confidential procedure without a prescribed clock can make time itself consequential. The CJI’s statement does not announce a timetable.The Justice Varma episode demonstrates that the mechanism can move quickly once activated. The CJI’s statement narrows the Rajasthan question further: how far has the process moved, and can it reach an institutional conclusion before Justice Sharma’s retirement?The author is contributing editor at Supreme Court Observer.