Panel set up to go into charges against Justice Dinakaran

A three-member committee headed by Supreme Court judge V.S. Sirpurkar has been set up to go into allegations against Karnataka Chief Justice P.D. Dinakaran who has been sought to be impeached by 75 opposition members in the Rajya Sabha.

Justice A.R. Dave, Chief Justice of Andhra Pradesh High Court and noted jurist P.P. Rao are the other members of the committee which has been constituted by Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari, it was announced on Saturday.

The committee, set up under the Judges (Inquiry) Act, will go into the grounds on which the removal of Justice Paul Daniel Dinakaran Premkumar, Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court is prayed for, a Rajya Sabha notification said.

The formation of the committee comes more than a month after Mr. Ansari admitted a notice of the motion by 75 MPs to start impeachment proceedings against Justice Dinakaran after he refused to resign in spite of the Supreme Court collegium dropping its recommendation to elevate him to th apex court in the wake of two reports by the district collector of Tiruvallur that he had encroached upon 196 acres of government land in Tiruvallur near Chennai.

This was one of the several allegations made against Justice Dinakaran. Most of the irregularities alleged, including amassing of wealth disproportionate to his known sources of income, getting government housing plots by misrepresentation, entering into benami transactions owning lands beyond the 15-acre ceiling imposed by the Government of Tamil Nadu and handling cases in which he had an interest, relate to the period he was a judge of the Madras High Court.

The MPs belonging to various opposition parties, including BJP and Left, submitted the petition to Mr. Ansari seeking impeachment of Justice Dinakaran.

Justice Dinakaran, who has denied the allegations, has however been forced to stay off judicial work following sustained campaign by the Bangalore Bar.

The Bangalore lawyers’ agitation after the Lawyers for Judicial Accountability, a body of eminent advocates practising in the Madras High C Court, compiled the allegations and brought them to the notice of the collegium through eminent jurists like Nani Palkhivala when his name was included for elevation to the Supreme Court.

The enquiry committee will report to the Rajya Sabha Chairman. If the allegations are found to have substance, then the House will take up impeachment, unless he chooses to resign.

If the committee concludes that impeachment proceedings be launched, the matter will debated in both Houses of Parliament. The judge facing impeachment will be given an opportunity to defend himself, either in person or through his representative. However, the entire process—debate onwards -— has to be completed within a single session of the House, failing which the motion will abate and it can e taken up only if the entire process is repeated afresh in any subsequent session.

After the debate ends and the judge has been heard, if the House decides to put the motion to vote, the resolution has to be passed by two-thirds majority in both Houses in the same session. The resolution is then sent to the President who orders removal of the judge.

The only time Parliament came close to impeaching a judge was in the case of former Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice V Ramaswami for corruption in 1991. However, the move failed as the then Congress government asked all Congress MPs to abstain from voting, thus defeating the motion. After escaping the noose, so to say, he got a ticket from the AIADMK to contest against Marumalarchi DMK in a Lok Sabha elections. Of course, Vaiko trounced him.

Last year, 58 MPs of the Rajya Sabha moved a motion for impeachment of Calcutta High Court Judge Soumitra Sen for his involvement in financial misappropriation before he was appointed as a judge. The matter is pending before a three-member committee constituted by the Rajya Sabha Chairman.

Senior Congress Minister and eminent lawyer Kapil Sibal, who defended Justice Ramasami on the floor of Parliament, has told NDTV television news channel that he doesn't agree with the system where an impugned judge's fate is decided on the basis of numbers in Parliament.

Once a political party issues a whip on the motion, individual MPs cannot take an independent decision, he has said, and called for a system where the guilt or otherwise of a judge is not decided by majority.

- Asian Tribune -