In an unusual turn of events, the Supreme Court on Friday recalled its own unprecedented order from August 4, which had directed that an Allahabad High Court judge, Justice Prashant Kumar, be removed from hearing criminal matters until his retirement and be made to sit with a senior judge.
The initial directive from a bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and R Mahadevan was issued after they expressed concern over an order by Justice Kumar. Reasoning that the existence of a civil remedy for money recovery was insufficient justification to dismiss the criminal case, Justice Kumar had initially refused to quash a criminal complaint. This line of thinking was deemed 'perverse' and 'illegal' by the Supreme Court.
BR Gavai, the Chief Justice of India (CJI), requested that the order be recalled. Since the initial order had drawn a lot of criticism for violating the Chief Justice of the High Court's administrative authority, the CJI wrote to Justice Pardiwala's bench requesting that they reevaluate the limitations they had imposed on the High Court judge.
Justice Pardiwala said, "We have received an undated letter from the Hon'ble Chief Justice of India requesting the reconsideration of the observations in paras...." as justification for relisting the case. In these situations, we instructed the Registry to re-notify the primary matter in order to take the Chief Justice of India's request into consideration."
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In addition to the CJI's intervention, a group of thirteen High Court judges had also written to the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court, urging him not to implement the Supreme Court’s earlier directions.
In the fresh order, Justice Pardiwala clarified that the bench had no intention to embarrass or disparage Justice Kumar. "We must clarify that our intention was not to cause embarrassment or cast aspersions on the concerned Judge. We would not even think of doing so," he said. He added, however, that when a matter "crosses a threshold and the dignity of the institution is imperilled, it becomes the constitutional responsibility of this Court to intervene even when acting under its appellate jurisdiction under Article 136 of the Constitution."
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The bench went on to explain that the Supreme Court's actions were intended to preserve the honour of the judiciary as a whole without compromising the High Court's administrative power. It underlined that rather than existing independently of the legal system, High Courts are an essential component of it.
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The new order confirmed the High Court Chief Justice's jurisdiction over case distribution by clearly stating, "We hereby delete paragraphs 25 and 26 of our August 4 order and leave it to the Chief Justice of the High Court to take an appropriate view."
The bench upheld its position that Justice Kumar's initial order was 'perverse' and 'illegal,' and it voiced grave concerns about the logic behind it, even though it retracted the contentious directives. The court stated that such directives should not be disregarded since they have the potential to erode public trust in the legal system.
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