{The court in which the case came up was inadvertently published as “Supreme Court” instead of “Allahabad High Court” in the print issue of India Legal (“Rare Reproach” September 30, 2014). We regret the error.} —Editor
The senior advocate was pulled up by the Allahabad High Court for trying to force one of the judges to recuse himself from a case
By India Legal Team
In a surprising development, a champion against corruption was given a rap on the knuckles by an Allahabad High Court bench, for being motivated by the wealth of his client and forgetting his duties to the court. Senior advocate Shanti Bhushan was pulled up by Justices Arun Tandon and Arvind Kumar Mishra for trying to intimidate one of them to recuse himself from a case which Bhushan was representing. This is significant as Bhushan, along with his son Prashant, have been torchbearers in the fight against corruption. Besides, the former law minister is a patron of the Aam Aadmi Party.
Embarrassing indictment
The bench’s scathing indictment said: “A senior seasoned advocate should not reflect uncertainty in his accomplishments by adopting a sharp practice like deliberately intimidating a judge to recuse himself through a theatrical performance encouraged only by the purse of his client as against his true obligations towards the court and society at large, where he keeps preaching all the time about the maladies of a corrupt mind. He should not appear hypocritical by pretending to go to heroic lengths in the devilish interests of his clients. He should not allow his rationality and objectivity to be overtaken with the aid of aggression and intolerance.”
The case involved the appointment of one Arun Kumar Mishra to the Uttar Pradesh State Industrial Development Corporation Ltd (UPSIDC). He was being represented by Bhushan, one among the other advocates before him. This appointment was challenged by one Anil Kumar Verma, who filed a case against UPSIDC and four others, including Arun Kumar Mishra.
On January 29, 2014, the high school marksheet and examination certificate of Mishra (Respondent 3) were produced before a division bench of the Allahabad High Court. But he was asked to produce the original cross list of the high school examination of 1976 with reference to the roll number. At the same time, Awadh University, from where Mishra graduated, was asked to produce the cross list of the B Tech examination for 1983. The hearing was posted for February 5, 2014.
But from the time the case started, Mishra and his advocates tried to get the case heard through some other bench as they felt the present one was not favorable to them. The sequence of events shows how persistent Mishra was.
Delaying tactics
On February 12, 2014, Mishra’s first advocate, Shishir Prakash, made an application before the chief justice that the petition be heard by some other bench. The application was rejected for being “thoroughly improper and lacking in substance”. On February 21, the matter again came up before the bench, but was filed by another counsel, Siddhartha Singh. But after he saw the contents of the earlier application and the order of the chief justice, he himself withdrew the petition. But a new set of counsels came to the fore, Kartik Seth and Anoop Trivedi. As records had not been produced by the university concerned, the vice-chancellor was asked to come to court. Realizing that his goose was cooked, Mishra apologized and said the February 21 application was an ill-advised one. This plea was placed before court after Shanti Bhushan was engaged as Mishra’s counsel.
However, on March 11, 2014, Bhushan filed an application stating that he wanted one of the judges of the bench, Arun Tandon, to recuse himself from the case. He went so far as to file a personal affidavit to support the recuse application. The bench rejected Bhushan’s request.
But what irked the court was Bhushan’s absence from court. It said: “He did not have the courage to press the application before the court and conveniently avoided attending court proceedings after sometime.” The court made it clear that it was not personally interested in the hearing of any particular case. “The oath of the office commands us to do justice without fear or favor,” it said. “We hold this recusal application is motivated with a purpose to avoid this court…It is, hereby, rejected.”
The activism by courts in recent years was also evident when it clearly stated: “The court will not hesitate to do whatever is
within its lawful powers to protect the independence of the judicial system of this country, failing which the entire legal system would be brought to its knees. We have no doubt that better sense shall prevail and counsels shall keep in mind that, for a democracy to work, independence of judiciary is utmost and any attempt to browbeat the court can never be in the larger interest of a democracy.”
This was indeed a nasty judicial cut on the so-called champions against corruption.