On Thursday, February 20, the Supreme Court sent notice to the Union Government in a suo motu case that was started in response to a Lokpal ruling that said the court had jurisdiction over judges of the High Court.
A court consisting of Justices BR Gavai, Surya Kant, and Abhay S. Oka disagreed with the Lokpal’s logic and halted the order’s implementation. Additionally, the complainant and the Lokpal’s Registrar General received notice from the court. The complainant was prohibited by the bench from revealing the High Court judge’s name or the complaint’s contents.
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Justice Gavai remarked, “Something very disturbing,” about the Lokpal’s justification. A High Court judge was never supposed to be brought inside the Lokpal’s jurisdiction, according to Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta, who argued that the Lokpal’s interpretation was incorrect.
After the Constitution went into effect, Justices Gavai and Oka noted that all High Court justices are constitutional authority and cannot be viewed as merely statutory bureaucrats, as the Lokpal maintains.
Additionally, Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal criticized the Lokpal’s ruling and asked the bench to overturn it.
In short, the Lokpal was resolving a complaint alleging that a sitting High Court judge had influenced an Additional District Judge and another High Court judge to support a private corporation in a lawsuit when it issued the underlying ruling on January 27.
The Lok Pal, chaired by Justice AM Khanwilkar, a former Supreme Court judge, decided that a High Court judge would be considered a person in a body created by an Act of Parliament under Section 14(1)(f) of the Lokpal Act. It was reasoned that the High Court in question would fall under Section 14(1)(4) since it was established by an Act of Parliament for a recently founded State.
“It will be too naive to argue that a Judge of a High Court will not come within the ambit of expression” any person “in clause (f) of Section 14(1) of the Act of 2013,” the Lokpal wrote.
The Lokpal sent the complaint to the Chief Justice and awaited his decision without commenting on the case’s merits. “With our ruling, we have definitively resolved a single question: do the judges of the High Court, which was formed by an Act of Parliament, fall under the purview of Section 14 of the Act of 2013? The answer is in the yes. Neither more nor less. In that regard, we have neither investigated or evaluated the veracity of the accusations in any way,” the decree stated.
Notably, neither the judge’s nor the State/High Court’s identities were revealed in the Lokpal’s order.
The Lokpal had previously decided that as the Supreme Court was not a body created by a parliamentary act, it lacked jurisdiction over either the Chief Justice of India or a Supreme Court judge.