Dinakaran issue causes musical chairs among HC judges

The latest in the ongoing saga is that the Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court has been transferred to the Sikkim High Court.

The Supreme Court collegium had earlier asked the Chief Justice to go on leave while an impeachment motion is being considered against him. But as in the past, Justice Dinakaran remained steadfast in his resolve of not going away quietly and refused to go on leave. Law Minister, Veerappa Moily too had demanded that Justice Dinakaran go on leave and respect the advice of the Supreme Court collegium.

The collegium comprised of Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan, Justices S.H. Kapadia, Altamas Kabir, R.V. Raveendran and Dalveer Bhandari. Seeing Dinakaran’s defiant attitude, the collegium has decided to transfer him to the North-Eastern court which sees low levels of litigation traffic.

Present Acting Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Madan Lokur will now be appointed as the Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court and Chief Justice of Jammu and Kashmir High Court, Barin Ghosh who was due to take up his appointment as the Chief Justice of the Sikkim High Court will now await a new posting. Sikkim High Court has a sanctioned strength of 3 Judges and according to latest available statistics had 88 cases pending before the High Court bench.

It remains to be seen how the lawyers’ body in the North Eastern state will take the news of Justice Dinakaran’s appointment. Earlier when there was talk of Dinakaran’s posting to the Gauhati High Court, the lawyers’ body of Assam had led some intense agitations against the appointment of the tainted judge.

Finally the Karnataka High Court will have a Chief Justice who will perform both judicial functions and the required administrative functions. However, several questions remain unanswered; whether a tainted judge can be posted to High Courts that have fewer pending cases? What if another High Court judge is found corrupt after Justice Dinakaran is transferred to the Sikkim High Court? Will such a judge be posted to the Sikkim High Court or will he or she be transferred to the Uttaranchal High Court which has the second least statistics of pending cases?

The Supreme Court and the Law Ministry need to set some parameters to decide these questions in light of several scandals hitting the headlines. Few days back, Justice Nirmal Yadav was transferred from the Punjab & Haryana High Court to the Uttaranchal High Court as she was named in the cash-at-judge’s door scandal. Given the trend, the next destination to any tainted Judge may be Jammu & Kashmir as the High Court there is the ranked third least busy High Court in the country.