Why did SC dismiss Justice Yashwant Varmas plea?

News18

a day ago

New Delhi [India], August 7 (ANI): The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a plea filed by Justice Yashwant Varma of the Allahabad High Court challenging the in-house inquiry panel's report, and the former Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sanjiv Khanna's recommendation to initiate impeachment proceedings against him in the case of a fire incident that led to recovery of burnt unaccounted cash at his official residence in the national capital, when he was a sitting judge of the Delhi High Court.While rejecting Justice Varma's plea, a bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Ujjal Bhuyan reasoned that Justice Varma's conduct in having knocked the top court's door only after the completion of the in-house proceedings that led to the initiation of an impeachment motion against him, did not inspire confidence for the top court to entertain his plea.'If indeed any fault were found in the procedure and questions were to be raised, the Petitioner ought not to have waited for completion of the fact-finding inquiry set in motion by the CJI. The conduct of the Petitioner, therefore, does not inspire much confidence for us to entertain the writ petition", the bench noted, in its 57-page verdict.The bench noted that though the aforesaid reasoning would have been sufficient for it to reject Justice Varma's plea, it did not wish to tread the easy route but would rest its conclusions by answering other legal questions involved in the case as well.To Justice Varma, having challenged the in-house procedure set in motion by the former CJI on the ground that it has no legal sanctity and is an extra-constitutional mechanism, the Court responded by stating that the same is unacceptable.It stated that Section 3(2) of the Judges (Protection) Act, 1985 which empowers Central government, State government, Supreme Court, High Courts, or any other authority (under any existing law) to take such action — whether civil, criminal, departmental, or otherwise–against someone who is or was a judge, includes the law laid down by the Supreme Court under Article 141 (Law declared by Supreme Court to be binding on all courts) of the Constitution and that the term 'otherwise' read in conjunction with 'such action', in the aforesaid 1985 Act provision is wide enough to cover actions undertaken by the in-house procedure. Thus, it held that the procedure did have the 'required legal sanctity."