Patna HC bench junks judge’s order

Source: Times of India dated 30.08.2019

Debashish Karmakar, Patna

He Had Made Allegations Of Rampant Bribery In Civil Court

A Patna high court 11-judge bench suspended on Thursday a single-judge bench’s order of a day earlier directing a CBI inquiry into “rampant bribery” in the city civil court, a move described as unprecedented in the state’s legal history. The 11-judge bench, headed by chief justice Amreshwar Pratap Sahi, not only termed Justice Rakesh Kumar’s single-bench order “null and void under law” but also questioned his jurisdiction.

On Wednesday, Justice Kumar had made adverse remarks about the “Patna judgeship” while ordering a CBI probe into bribery allegations that had featured in two separate sting operations carried out by private TV channels in December 2017.

He had also suo moto revived the matter of the anticipatory bail petition of scam-accused retired IAS officer K P Ramaiah. He directed the Patna district and session judge to conduct an inquiry and submit a report within four weeks on how, and under what circumstances, Ramaiah was granted bail after surrendering. On March 23 last year, Justice Kumar had rejected the bureaucrat’s plea keeping in view the serious nature of allegations against him.

In relation to Justice Kumar’s oral order for the listing of the case without mentioning any directive from the chief justice, the 11-judge bench observed that the judge had overstepped his judicial limits for “gaining yellow-page fame”. Before delivering the order, the chief justice summoned the court master attached to Justice Rakesh Kumar and took a written explanation from him on how and on whose orders he had acted to get the matter listed. He also took note of the involvement of all HC officials who acted to get the case listed and wanted to know how the counsel for the state and the accused got to know the matter was listed.

Taking suo moto cognizance of the case from news items on Thursday on Justice Kumar’s order, the 11-judge bench observed, “It seems the learned judge assumed himself to be pure as 24-carat gold. His order was malicious and delivered with prejudice. He committed grievous error by assuming a jurisdiction which was not available to him under any law for the time being in force, not even by administrative order of the chief justice seems the learned judge assumed that whatever he has perceived from his experience is all 24-carat truth and, except himself, the rest of the world had created misery around. His order was malicious and delivered with prejudice. He committed a grievous error by assuming a jurisdiction which was not available to him under any law.”

Justice Kumar had directed that his order be communicated to the CJI as well as the SC collegium judges, the PMO and the Union ministry of law and justice. He had urged the SC to take appropriate steps to reintroduce the policy of transferring judges from their parent HC after elevation to plug “incidents of favouritism and corruption”. The 11-judge bench directed that all matters pending before Justice Kumar be withdrawn immediately. A notice in this regard was included in Thursday’s cause-list of the high court. During Wednesday’s hearing, Justice Kumar had directed the Patna district and session judge to conduct an inquiry and submit a report within four weeks on how Ramaiah was granted bail.

The SC does not need more judges

Source: Hindustan Times dated 29.08.2019

By Gautam Bhatia
Limit the court’s exploding jurisdiction, and ensure clarity and consistency in its judgments

In the first week of August, the Lok Sabha passed a bill to increase the strength of Supreme Court (SC) judges from the present 30 to 33. The bill followed from a letter written by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) , where this suggestion had been first mooted as a way of decreasing the massive backlog of cases at the SC.

It is true that India has one of the worst judges-to-population ratio in the world. However, while intuitively, increasing the number of judges might seem to ease problems of pendency and backlog, the reality is more complicated — especially at the SC. The first thing to note is that a major reason for pendency at the SC is not a shortage of judges, but the court’s own ever-expanding jurisdiction. As the highest court in the land, the SC is expected to hear cases selectively. The original intention of the constitutional framers was that it would decide constitutional cases, disputes between states and the Centre, or substantial questions of law (especially where there was a disagreement between different high courts).

And this was indeed how the SC functioned in its early days. In case there was a substantial question of law involved, the high court that first heard the case would, of its own accord, grant to the parties a “certificate of leave to appeal” to the SC; without that certificate, a party would be forced to file a “special leave to appeal”, which, in an overwhelming number of cases, would be rejected. This is still the procedure followed in many other courts — including the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom — in order to ensure that the workload of the highest court is manageable.

Justice Kureshi case: Govt asserts role in judge appointment

Source: Times of India dated 29.08.2019

(Pradeep Thakur) New Delhi:

Asserting its role in judicial appointments, the Centre has asked the Supreme Court collegium to consider Justice Akil Abdulhamid Kureshi, who has been recommended to be appointed as chief justice of Madhya Pradesh High Court, for some other HC instead.

The law ministry made the suggestion in a letter to the CJI, sources said. The SC collegium had earlier given the government a deadline of August 14 to offer its view on appointing Justice Kureshi as chief justice of Madhya Pradesh High Court.

CJI Ranjan Gogoi said he would place the Centre’s letter before the collegium for a decision. Justice Kureshi is currently a judge of Bombay HC. His parent bench is Gujarat HC where he was first appointed as additional judge in 2004. He will serve as a judge of the HC till 2022.

The SC collegium recommended to the Centre on May 10 to appoint Justice Kureshi as chief justice of MP HC along with three other recommendations for appointment of chief justices in the high courts of Telangana, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi.

The government appointed the other three chief justices as per the recommendations of the collegium, except for Justice Kureshi. While the collegium’s recommendation on Justice Kureshi was pending, the government went ahead and notified appointment of Justice Ravi Shanker Jha as acting chief justice of MP HC on June 10.

After the government withheld the recommendation on Justice Kureshi, the Gujarat HC Bar Association filed a petition in the SC seeking a direction to the Centre to implement the collegium’s resolution. The government told the SC on August 2 that it would take a decision after the Parliament session to which the SC kept the petition pending with a direction to the Centre to make the appointment by August 14.

In his first comments after taking charge of the law ministry on June 3, Ravi Shankar Prasad had said he should not be treated as a post office. The minister’s remarks were in reference to appointments to higher judiciary recommended by the Supreme Court collegium.

Deserted, can woman claim right to reside at in-laws’?

Source: Times of India dated 29.08.2019

By Amit Anand Choudhary. New Delhi:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to examine whether a woman deserted by her husband could claim residential right in her in-laws’ house where she had been living after marriage?

A bench of Justices N V Ramana, M M Shantanagoudar and Ajay Rastogi issued notice to the Centre asking whether residential right could be given to a woman under Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act on a plea filed by a Muslim woman who alleged that her husband her deserted her in 2004 and her in-laws threw her out of her matrimonial house.

Petitioner Shabnam Ahmed, a mother of three, claimed that her husband went to the UK 15 years ago and did not come back. She claimed that her husband divorced her illegally by pronouncing triple talaq in 2007 on phone and her in-laws threw her out along with her daughter. Her two other children are still living with her in-laws.

Shabnam, 40, had first approached the trial court seeking residential right in the house but her plea was dismissed in 2018 and she approached the apex court directly against the trial court order.

Justifying filing the petition in the SC instead of moving an appeal in the high court, senior advocate R B

Singhal and lawyer Nilofar Khan told the bench that Shabnam’s plea for residential right was rejected by the trial court by relying on an SC judgment of 2007.

They urged the court to reexamine the verdict as the provision pertaining to residential right was narrowly interpreted and was affecting the rights of women in matrimonial disputes. In 2007, the SC had said the wife was not entitled to seek residential right if the house in which she lived with her husband belonged to the in-laws.

Singhal told the court that there was difference of opinion among HCs on residential right claimed by the wife in a shared household belonging to the in-laws and requested the bench to adjudicate the issue to end contradictions. He said the 2007 verdict was against the spirit and objective of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act.

The petitioner claimed that she was forced to live hand-to-mouth after being thrown out of her matrimonial house and was surviving on the support of her friends, including her lawyer, as her parents were no more. She said her husband had remarried and her in-laws cut off ties with her and refused to provide any help on the ground that they had disowned their son. She said she was forced to take legal recourse in 2013 after her parents died as she had no place to live.