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Monday, May 03, 2004

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National

Supreme Court takes exception to Patna High Court CJ's remarks

By Our Legal Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MAY 2. The Supreme Court has pulled up the Patna High Court Chief Justice for his remarks against the Supreme Court which had asked the High Court Registrar-General to furnish certain information regarding a pending case.

Presiding over a Division Bench of the High Court, the High Court Chief Justice had taken exception to the communication sent by the Supreme Court and passed an order stating that "seeking an explanation from the High Court at the instigation of an erring litigant, would be a very sad day... A copy of this order may be sent to the Registrar-General, the Supreme Court, to be placed before the court which passed the orders [seeking a report from the High Court.]"

Dealing with the issue, a Supreme Court Bench, consisting of Justice R.C. Lahoti and Justice Ashok Bhan, said: "There was absolutely no occasion for the High Court to feel annoyed and disturbed, much less feel perturbed and react, in the manner in which it has unfortunately done. Our embarrassment stands multiplied when we notice that the Chief Justice of the High Court headed the Division Bench of the High Court, which passed the order on December 3, 2003. All this was avoidable and should have been avoided far from making a mountain of a mole hill."

The High Court had passed the orders on a public interest litigation petition restraining all construction work on the entire stretch of Bailey Road, Patna. The Tirupati Balaji Developers Pvt. Ltd. and others engaged in construction activity, aggrieved over the order, moved the Supreme Court. To ascertain the correctness of their averments, a three-Judge Bench of the Supreme Court had called for a response from the High Court.

Writing the order for the Bench, Mr. Justice Lahoti expressed anguish and asked: "Is it proper for the High Court to issue a direction to the Registrar-General of the Supreme Court to place its communication for consideration before a particular Bench of this court?" An institution dealing with another institution under the Constitution should observe grace and courtesy. No Judge should criticise another Judge and certainly not strongly.

"The very existence of appellate jurisdiction obliges the lower jurisdiction to render all assistance to the higher jurisdiction to enable the exercise of appellate jurisdiction fully and effectively," the Bench said.

The communication should have been dealt with on the administrative side and responded to by the Registrar General of the High Court, just apprising this court of the factual position. "Such procedure is followed quite often and nobody has ever taken any exception to this practice barring the singular instance with which we are reluctantly dealing with," the Bench said.

"We have to maintain the dignity of this august institution as the Supreme Court of the country and undo a mistaken assumption of the High Court that any order of this court is intended to undermine the High Court's status as a constitutional court or court of record. Such an order of the High Court, which has done no good either to this court or to the High Court itself, having been brought to our notice, we are constitutionally obliged not to blink our eyes but to act and so we do."

The Judges directed all those passages in the order passed by the High Court to be expunged and scored out as derogatory of this court, disparaging, totally uncalled for and that such remarks should not continue to be retained on the record of the High Court as well.

The Bench asked the High Court Registrar-General to comply with this order in letter and in spirit and send a compliance report.

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