Chief Justice of India Surya Kant was perhaps within his rights to decline a meeting with Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi. A brief refusal citing the pending cases would have sufficed. His two-page reply of October 11 goes further on three counts. It rests the refusal on the basic structure, disclaims administrative power over the issues, and promises an early hearing. Each sets a standard by which the court may itself be judged. A judge who receives a memorandum on a pending case from one side is understood to have heard that side in the other side’s absence. The Restatement of Values of Judicial Life was adopted by the full court in May 1997. It asks judges to avoid any act that erodes faith in their impartiality. It also asks them to practise “a degree of aloofness consistent with the dignity” of the office.The concern is concrete here, because Justice Kant headed the bench that upheld the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls on May 27. That ruling came in the Association for Democratic Reforms v Election Commission of India. He also headed the three-judge bench that on October 9 directed the Union government to keep metro and train services running. Every subject in the memorandum was thus a matter on which he had sat, or would sit, as a judge.Precedent points the same way, so far as it exists. This writer could trace no instance of a sitting Chief Justice receiving a political delegation carrying a memorandum on a pending case.Chief Justice N.V. Ramana, who headed the Court from April 2021 to August 2022, put the general point bluntly. Speaking in San Francisco in July 2022, he said the party in power expects judicial endorsement of its actions. Opposition parties, he said, expect the judiciary to advance their causes. The judiciary, he added, is “answerable to the Constitution and Constitution alone”.The route the letter recommends has also been taken before this very bench. In February, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee argued Mostari Banu’s petition against the SIR before CJI Kant. When her appearance was questioned, the bench said it showed faith in the Constitution and its institutions.A doctrine that carries further than the occasion neededThe appeal to separation of powers is the letter’s most ambitious passage, and propriety alone could have supported the refusal. Kharge and Gandhi are legislators in opposition who exercise no power over the court. What a meeting with them would have endangered is the appearance of even-handedness towards prospective litigants.If a conversation about pending matters with leaders of another organ offends the basic structure, then this should hold for all sides of the divide. In September 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined a Ganesh puja at then Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud’s residence, when the Union was a litigant in many matters before him. Lawyers who objected relied on the same 1997 Restatement. Both men defended the visit: the Prime Minister did so publicly, and Justice Chandrachud later said there was nothing wrong in it.The Bharatiya Janata Party has welcomed Sunday’s refusal as proof that the judiciary must stay above political battles. Future critics of encounters between judges and ministers may now cite a text signed by a Chief Justice.Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud and his wife Kalpana Das at the latter’s residence to participate in a Ganesh puja. Photo: X/@zahidpatkaWhen ‘administrative powers’ become pivotalOn the administrative side, the CJI allots cases and constitutes benches. A Constitution Bench held in November 2017 that “he alone has the prerogative to constitute Benches”. The case was Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms v Union of India. Those powers govern only the court’s own working. That is the sense in which his letter says the Court has no “administrative powers to deal with the issues” raised. An office note from him can neither remove an election commissioner nor reopen a metro station.Two qualifications may still be entered, the first being that the court has historically turned letters into petitions. Sunil Batra v Delhi Administration, decided in December 1979, began as a prisoner’s letter to a judge about a fellow inmate’s torture. The Court treated that letter as a habeas corpus petition. A complaint about the “arbitrary arrest of several students” might conceivably have been placed before a bench in the same way.The CJI preferred a formal petition, and that preference is defensible when the letter-writers lead parties with ready access to senior counsel. The epistolary jurisdiction, as the practice of acting on letters is called, was fashioned for those who had no such access.The second qualification concerns the Election Commission, the first subject of the memorandum as the letter records it. The law that removed the CJI from the panel selecting election commissioners has been under challenge since 2024. On September 23, Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma differed on whether a Constitution Bench should hear it. The papers then went to the Chief Justice, who had recused himself from hearing the case in March.Also read: CJI Surya Kant’s Overreach as Master of the Roster Hurts People’s Faith in the Supreme CourtConstituting that bench is an administrative act, and on available reports it is still awaited. The administrative side of the court therefore does hold a power that bears on this part of the Opposition’s grievance. That power lends no support to the memorandum route, however. The court’s practice is that counsel for a party mentions the matter in open court to seek an early listing.An assurance that will be measuredBehind the opposition’s approach to the CJI lies a slower trend, which a Lokniti-CSDS survey captured in August 2025. It found that the share of respondents with no trust in the Election Commission had risen sharply since 2019. When confidence in the referee falls, political actors look for an umpire above it. The letter tells them that this umpire is reached through a filing counter.Rahul Gandhi has filed a petition against the Chief Election Commissioner and “vote chori”. The judicial route may prove narrower than the memorandum. Removal of a Chief Election Commissioner follows the procedure for a Supreme Court judge. Both presiding officers rejected the Opposition’s removal notices on April 6. The validity of the SIR was settled in May.What remains open is more specific, and part of it is already before the CJI bench. On September 29, that bench agreed to hear a plea based on a newspaper report. The report said two election commissioners had objected 14 times to SIR-related orders. The weekend’s policing, including detentions and transport shutdowns, is the other live question.The order signed the same dayOn the day the letter was sent, the Delhi Police Commissioner de-notified Jantar Mantar as a protest venue. Citing a home ministry committee, protests have been shifted to three other grounds, among them Ramlila Ground and Burari.Could the government take this step before the Court heard the protest petitions again? On the face of the record, it could. On October 9, his bench recorded that it was “high time” to identify a “suitable place where all basic amenities can be provided”. It added, “Let the competent authority consider the suggestion and take an appropriate decision.”Solicitor General Tushar Mehta asked that his statement about considering another site be recorded in the order. No direction to maintain the existing position was passed. The pendency of a case does not by itself suspend executive power. A party under no restraint may act, subject to the Court’s final ruling.Propriety is a separate test from legality, and two kinds of it were in play last weekend. The CJI observed the one that keeps a judge from hearing a party outside court. The government, a litigant in the protest cases, appears to have set aside the one that counsels waiting for the hearing.Whether the government should have acted, and whether the order will survive scrutiny, are distinct questions. Three features of the order may engage the bench.The first is the distance between the suggestion and the decision. The bench spoke of amenities, and the CJI mentioned protesters being denied toilets. The Solicitor General spoke of ambulances struggling to reach the site. The standing order is silent on when the committee was constituted and whom it consulted. Two days separate the suggestion from the order.The second is the Court’s July 2018 judgment in Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan v Union of India. That judgment examined a National Green Tribunal order that stopped protests at Jantar Mantar and shifted them to Ramlila Maidan. The Court held that “total extinction is not balancing” and directed the Police Commissioner to devise a mechanism for the site’s limited use.Sunday’s order appears to reach, by an executive route, the destination the tribunal had chosen. The government may reply that the same judgment noted that, in “an era of technology”, a distant venue need not silence a protest. Protesters may recall that farmers in November 2020 declined the Burari ground, which one of their leaders called an open jail.The third is timing, since a special bench sat on Sunday and directed that peaceful protesters must not be illegally detained. It posted the protest petitions and a contempt plea for Tuesday. On Monday, the Delhi high court agreed to hear a plea on Jantar Mantar’s closure the next day. It noted that the Supreme Court was “equally seized of the matter”.A decision taken on the eve of a hearing presents the Court with a fait accompli. The burden then shifts, in practice, to those who want the earlier position restored. The Court retains the power to call for the committee’s record, test the order’s proportionality and restore the earlier arrangement.Two documents, one hearingRead together, the letter and the standing order show two ways in which the court’s word reaches the executive. The letter insists on the formal way, which requires a petition, a hearing of both sides and a reasoned order. The standing order followed a suggestion recorded during a hearing on train and metro services. That suggestion was neither argued as an issue nor decided, yet it became policy within two days. Such a suggestion binds no one, so the responsibility for acting on it before the hearing rests with the government alone. The contrast has its limits, because the suggestion was made in open court with counsel for both sides present. The Solicitor General said that senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who appeared for the petitioner, was agreeable to it. The standing order itself cites a Home Ministry committee and makes no reference to the Court.If Tuesday’s bench accepts the de-notification as lawful, protesters will have lost their site through a case filed to keep trains running. If the bench examines the order closely, it will be reviewing the product of its own suggestion.In either event, the CJI who declined to receive a memorandum on the administrative side will meet its contents on the judicial side. In court, both sides are heard and reasons are given in public. That is the strength of the route his letter prescribes, and Tuesday’s hearing will be its first test.V. Venkatesan is a contributing editor at Supreme Court Observer.