New Delhi: The Supreme Court's second senior-most judge on Thursday refused to deal with a plea for clipping the powers of the Chief Justice in the latest turn of events since an unprecedented media conference in January had brought internal differences into the open.

"I do not want another reversal of my order in 24 hours. I am going to retire in a few days and I cannot hear your PIL on allocation of cases...," Justice J. Chelameswar told advocate Prashant Bhushan.

"For reasons obvious, I will not deal with this case," the top court's second senior-most judge, who is due to retire on June 22, added.

The public interest plea, filed by Prashant Bhushan's father and constitutional expert Shanti Bhushan, wanted the Chief Justice's powers clipped on allocation of cases.

On Wednesday, a three-judge bench of Chief

Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud had dismissed a PIL, which too had wanted the CJI's administrative powers curbed.

The bench had asserted there would be no dilution of the Chief Justice's powers and made clear that he continued to be the "master of the roster".

Earlier, on January 12, Justice Chelameswar and three of the court's next senior-most judges had held an unprecedented media conference where they had complained about selective allocation of cases to preferred benches.

They had also said "senior-most judges" were ignored while cases were allocated.

Thursday's comments by Justice Chelameswar were possibly an allusion to a judgment that a five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Misra had passed on November 10 last year.

That constitution bench had then set aside an order passed a day earlier by a two-judge bench headed by Justice Chelameswar.

The bench of Justice Chelameswar had directed that a bench of the court's five senior-most judges deal with a public interest plea that an NGO had filed.

The NGO, Campaign for Judicial Accountability, had sought an independent probe into allegations of bribery pertaining to an Uttar Pradesh-based medical college, a matter being heard then by Justice Misra.

Chief Justice Misra did set up a five-judge bench but Justice Chelameswar was not among the five judges. The comment "another reversal of my order in 24 hours" was possibly an allusion to that ruling.

On Thursday, after Justice Chelameswar declined to deal with Bhushan senior's plea, his son Prashant Bhushan rushed to Justice Misra's court where he wanted the CJI to direct the registry to list the matter before an appropriate bench. Justice Chandrachud, who was sitting with the CJI along with Justice Khanwilkar, asked Prashant Bhushan whether the "defects", if any, in the petition "had been cured".

When the counsel replied in the affirmative, the CJI said "we will look into it".

The PIL wants the power of allocating benches to be dealt with by a bench that does not include the CJI.

A specific prayer in the plea was that the CJI should not have any say even in the allocation of the bench that would hear the case, since the PIL was questioning the Chief Justice's powers as master of the roster.

Shanti Bhushan has also urged the top court to vest the five-member collegium (of the CJI and the four senior-most judges) with the power of allocating cases, instead of the existing practice of the Chief Justice doing it alone.