Supreme Court: The Supreme Court will hear on Tuesday (February 7) a petition challenging the appointment of lawyer Laxman Chandra Victoria Gauri as a judge in the Madras High Court. On the other hand, Victoria Gauri has taken oath as a judge. However, in view of this important event, there is also a question whether the Supreme Court has ever rejected the appointment of a High Court judge before? So the answer is ‘yes’, once it happened. Let us tell you the whole matter in detail.
There is only one instance in the history of the Supreme Court of quashing the appointment of a High Court judge. This extraordinary action took place in the 1992 case of Kumar Padma Prasad v. Union of India & Ors., 1992 2 SCC 428. In this case, the Supreme Court had rejected the appointment of KN Srivastava. He was about to take oath as a judge in the Gauhati High Court.
Bar gave this argument
A controversy arose in the 1992 case when a section of the Bar Council objected to Srivastava’s appointment. Bar said he never practiced as a lawyer nor held any judicial office. The Bar also said that K.N. Srivastava does not fulfill the basic qualification prescribed under Article 217 of the Constitution.
The High Court had given a direction to the Center to reconsider
Srivastava was a Secretary-level officer in the Law and Judicial Department of the Government of Mizoram and was also a member of some tribunals and commissions in that capacity. When a lawyer filed a writ petition challenging his appointment, the Gauhati High Court, through an interim order, directed that the presidential appointment warrant for Srivastava should not be given effect to. The High Court further directed the Central Government to reconsider his appointment and after that the matter reached the Supreme Court.
The appointment was canceled by the Supreme Court on this basis
It is noteworthy that allegations of corruption and misappropriation of funds were also leveled against KN Srivastava. However, the court did not take into account those aspects and decided the matter on a legal issue. A three-judge bench comprising Justices Kuldeep Singh, PB Sawant and NM Kasliwal observed that Srivastava held a position under the control of the executive and was therefore not a judicial office.
Now the same case has been cited again
This 1992 case has been cited to challenge the appointment of advocate L Victoria Gauri as a judge of the Madras High Court. Senior advocate Raju Ramachandran challenged the appointment of Victoria Gauri on the ground that she had given hate speeches against religious minorities.
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