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Judge indicted for 'rewriting over-ruled verdict'

The Supreme Court has indicted a judge of the Calcutta high court for 'rewriting an over-ruled judgment of his own'.

''We are constrained to observe that it was not competent on Justice Ajit Kumar Sengupta's part to have presided over the bench in which the impugned judgment was passed as he had already expressed his opinion in the earlier writ petition which was over-ruled.

''He should have disassociated himself from that bench in keeping with the high traditions of the institution so as to give effect to the rule that 'justice should not only be done, it should manifestly be seen to have been done','' a bench of Justices S Saghir Ahmad and G B Pattanaik observed while allowing two appeals by the state of West Bengal and others.

Justice Ahmad, who wrote the judgment for the bench, prefaced it by saying, ''Whether 'judicial obstinacy' can be treated as a form of 'bias' is the question which we intend to answer in these appeals.''

Six assistants had challenged the denial of promotion to them in a writ petition before the high court. The writ petition was allowed by Justice Sengupta, sitting singly, commanding the authorities concerned to promote the petitioners with effect from March 13, 1980. This direction was set aside.

Justice Sengupta, in a subsequent writ petition between the same parties, gave a declaration that the petitioners should be treated to have been promoted with effect from March 13, 1980.

Significantly, such a declaration was not prayed for and what was prayed was that a direction be issued to the state government to pay arrears of salary of the high post with effect from March 13, 1980.

''There is hardly any difference between the two judgments. In fact, the second writ petition constitutes a crude attempt to revive the directions passed by Justice Sengutpa in the first judgment and, curiously, Justice Sengupta, sitting in the division bench, wrote, a second time, a judgement which was already over-ruled. He garnished the judgement by innocuously providing that arrears would not be payable to the petitioners before the high court... nor would they affect the seniority of others. But, this cannot conceal the deceptive innocence as it is obvious, on a judicial scrutiny, that the paramount purpose was to rewrite the over-ruled judgment,'' Justice Ahmad held in his 24-page judgment.

Justice Ahmad said ''all judicial functionaries had necessarily to have an unflinching character to decide a case with an unbiased mind.

''If a judgment is over-ruled by the higher court, the judicial discipline requires that the judge whose judgment is over-ruled must submit to that judgment. He cannot, in the same proceedings or in collateral proceedings between the same parties, rewrite the over-ruled judgement,'' Justice Ahmad observed.

UNI

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