Calcutta high court
The Calcutta high court on 26 July dismissed the second appeal of NUJS Kolkata registrar Surajit Mukhopadhyay against his suspension from the post by the vice-chancellor (VC), clearing the way for his dismissal by the university.
"In view of the long history and tradition associated with the existing name of the High Court at Calcutta”, a full court of judges objected to the name change that the government made recently and that would also affect the Bombay and Madras high courts (see letter).
The Union Cabinet at its meeting in Delhi today with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the chair approved the introduction of a bill to rename high courts named after cities they are located in, consequent to cities' name being changed.
The Supreme Court's vacation bench, comprising justices PC Ghose and Amitava Roy, on 10 June, was surprised to learn that an assistant teacher in the Malda district of West Bengal, had been teaching theology in a Madrasa without receiving salary for nearly a decade.
Former Madras high court judge Justice CS Karnan, who had objected to his transfer to the Calcutta high court earlier this month by vowing to pass a suo motu order staying his own transfer, with the Supreme Court then effectively stripping him of judicial powers, has struck conciliatory tones.
In a two-page letter sent to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) TS Thakur, with whom he met on 16 February, the two apex court judges who’d ruled against him, justices JS Khehar and R Banumathi, and several politicians, according to a number of reports, he wrote:
Justice Karnan admitted that the order was a result of his “mental frustration resulting in the loss of his mental balance”. He cited two incidents that had actually disturbed him and resulted in passing of the judicial order. “One was an incident that occurred during a marriage reception when a brother judge kicked me and later apologised. In another incident, the same judge allegedly removed the armchair reservation slip on my chair, threw it on the ground and trampled it with his feet. The same was noticed by a brother and sister judge who silently ridiculed me.”
“Now I am constrained to point out these past unfortunate happenings only because I maintain a very social outlook in the mainstream of the society and owe my allegiance to the high reputation of our prestigious court.”
“Hereinafter, I will still continue to foster a harmonious attitude to one and all, and will appreciate your kind reciprocation and oblige.”
The Supreme Court has rendered Madras high court judge Justice CS Karnan judicially impotent, ordering that he should not be allocated any cases and even if he did pass any orders suo motu, those should be ignored
In the Additional District and Sessions Judge, ‘X’ v. Supreme Court of India Through Secretary General And Anr., which came up before the bench comprising justices JS Khehar and Rohinton Nariman on 16 December, the petitioner’s counsel, Indira Jaising raised the relevance of the in-house committee report in establishing the misconduct of a judge.
21 additional judges of three high courts were granted extension through notifications by the Ministry of Law and Justice after receiving the first set of recommendations from the collegium reported Business Standard.
Additional judges from Calcutta high court granted extension for three months from 30 October were Samapati Chatterjee, Sahidullah Munshi, Subrata Talukdar, Tapabrata Chakraborty, Arindam Sinha, Arijit Banerjee and Debangsu Basak.
Additional judges from the Karnataka high court granted three months extension with effect from 24 October are Arakalagudu Venkataramaiah Chandrashekara, Rathnakala, Budihal Rudrappa Bhimappa, Pradeep Dattatraya Waingankar and Koratagere Narasimha Murthy Phaneendra.
The additional judges from Telangana high court granted three month extension with effect from 23 October are Bulusu Siva Sankara Rao, Mandhata Seetharama Murti, Saripella Ravi Kumar, Upmaka Durga Prasad Rao, Talluri Sunil Chowdary, Mallavolu Satyanarayana Murthy, Misrilal Sunil Kishore Jaiswal, Ambati Shankar Narayana and Anis.
From 13 April to 16 October this year, there was no system in place to appoint judges in India leading to increase in vacancies in the courts as the collegium system was replaced by NJAC Act, which was under scrutiny by Supreme Court.
Realizing the shortage of number of judges at various high courts, on 18 October the Law Ministry sent files of the additional judges to the collegium for its immediate consideration, it was reported. On the recommendation of the collegium, the extension or ‘reappointment’ was cleared by the government and sent to the President for his assent and later notified.
Unprecedented scenes; caused by fear of the bar.
A wide variance exists between how a case progresses through various high courts (HCs), according to a study by Bengaluru-based non-governmental organization (NGO) Daksh aimed at understanding how delays take place in the judicial system and how they affect the delivery of justice.
"Owing to misbehaviour and insult meted out to advocates for a pretty long time, we took a resolution to abstain and refrain from attending the court of Justice Girish Gupta,” Calcutta high court Bar Association outgoing secretary Rana Mukherjee told PTI about the reason for lawyers have boycotted Gupta’s court for six days running yesterday.
Gupta turned up to court but “retired to his chamber later in the day” after lawyers did not turn up. The bar has demanded an apology.
As first reported by Legally India on Wednesday, Calcutta high court Justice Aniruddha Bose made history as probably the first high court chamber to install a permanent video camera on the request of advocate Deepak Khosla.
Justice Aniruddha Bose created history today when Calcutta high court room 24, outfitted with a permanent video camera and microphone for the occasion, recorded the proceedings of advocate Deepak Khosla, which Khosla claims is the first time this has happened in a high court.
The hearing between advocate Deepak Khosla and Khaitan & Co in Kolkata on Thursday (18 June) will be video recorded, in what may be a first in any of the country’s high courts.
Calcutta high court advocates, following the local high court bar association’s majority resolution, have gone on strike for three days from today due to the heat, reported the PTI, with judges waiting in vain in chambers to handle cases without lawyers present despite relaxing lawyers’ dress code requirements to “white shirt and pants”.
Chief Justice Manjula Chellur “likened the attitude of a section of lawyers practising at the high court with that of schoolchildren” and that the strike was irritating and painful.
Phoenix Legal has hired Khaitan Sud & Partners partner Debarshi Dutta with senior associate Riddhi Sancheti and 2009-Nalsar grad Archisman Chaudhary into its Delhi litigation team.
Attorney General of India Mukul Rohatgi attacked the collegium system during his arguments in the Supreme Court yesterday defending the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC), using the example of allegations of bias and nepotism in 2013 judicial appointments, reported the Indian Express.
He cited former Gujarat high court chief justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya’s letter to the president that had alleged that the then-chief justice of India (CJI) Altamas Kabir had impeded his elevation to the Supreme Court because he had earlier, as part of the collegium, opposed the elevation of Kabir’s sister to the Calcutta high court.
“I dare say this but there are several examples like this. And what was the weightage given to the letter written by a fellow judge? How was that not important to collegium?” Rohatgi told the Constitution Bench led by Justice JS Khehar, as reported by /Express/.
Kabir’s sister Shukla Kabir Sinha was appointed as a Calcutta high court judge in 2010 by a collegium in which Kabir had recused himself from the decision, while Bhattacharya, who was also a part of the collegium, had objected to her elevation.
Advocate Deepak Khosla has filed a writ in the Calcutta high court to get Khaitan & Co to drop “& Co” from its name and for the high court to dismiss 20 years of pending and disposed of cases in which the firm acted.
The Department of Justice in the law ministry has begun drafting a bill to rename the Bombay and Madras high courts to Mumbai and Chennai high courts, respectively, reported the PTI.
The two high courts were established under the Indian High Court Act, 1861 alongside the Calcutta high court, and have so far resisted attempts to be renamed in line with their hosting cities.