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NDTV
5 days ago
- Politics
- NDTV
"Will Vacate Official Residence On Time Post Retirement": Chief Justice BR Gavai
New Delhi: Chief Justice of India B R Gavai on Thursday said due to time constraints he would not be able to find a suitable house by the time he retires in November and "for sure vacate" his official residence within the time period allowed under the rules. Bidding farewell to outgoing Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia, who is set to superannuate on August 9, the CJI at an event organised by Supreme Court Advocates on Record Association (SCAORA) called him a "warm person" who dedicated his career to the judiciary. Speaking to an audience comprising judges of the top court and high court aside from senior lawyers and their family members the CJI said Justice Dhulia would vacate his official residence, a day after his retirement. "We will always remember his contribution to the judiciary. After retirement, he is going to be in Delhi, and he'll be one of the judges who will be vacating the house immediately. On the next day of his retirement," the CJI said. Interestingly, a month ago in an unprecedented move, the Supreme Court administration wrote to the Centre to vacate the official residence of the Chief Justice of India at Krishna Menon Marg in Delhi, noting former CJI DY Chandrachud had stayed beyond the permissible period. Earlier in August, however, Justice Chandrachud vacated the official residence of the head of the judiciary. Referring to his and Justice Dhulia's situation, the CJI said, "As a matter of fact, that's a rarity. I wish I would also be in a position to do it till November 24. I won't find time to find a suitable house, but I can assure you that whatever time is permissible as per the rules, I'll be shifting before that. But Justice Dhulia has set a very good example. I am sure that many of us can emulate him." Justice Dhulia was a part of numerous judgements in the apex court, including the hijab ban case from Karnataka in which he dissented with the majority view and held there should be no restriction on the wearing of hijab anywhere in the schools and colleges of the state. When speakers lauded the verdict, Justice Dhulia said, "Let me tell you I was not defending the Hijab. What I was defending was the choice of women to wear Hijab. If I have a judicial philosophy, then I can only say that my judicial philosophy is everything is around the human being. Everything which is for the benefit of a human being is my judicial philosophy." The outgoing judge lauded the contributions of advocates-on-record and asked them to gear up for "their importance rises with the rise in litigation" and indicated that he would speak more on Friday, his last working day. In April, a bench headed by Justice Dhulia ruled Urdu language was born in this land and described it as the finest specimen of "Ganga Jamuni tahzeeb". The bench said considering it a language of Muslims was a "pitiable digression" from reality and unity in diversity. Justice Dhulia was born on August 10, 1960 and completed schooling in Dehradun, Allahabad and Lucknow. He was elevated as a permanent Judge of Uttarakhand High Court on November 1, 2008 and took oath as the Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court on January 10, 2021 before being elevated to the top court on May 9, 2022. PTI MNL MNL AMK AMK
Hindustan Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Will be vacating official residence on time post retirement: CJI BR Gavai
New Delhi, Chief Justice of India B R Gavai on Thursday said due to time constraints he would not be able to find a suitable house by the time he retires in November and "for sure vacate" his official residence within the time period allowed under the rules. Will be vacating official residence on time post retirement: CJI BR Gavai Bidding farewell to outgoing Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia, who is set to superannuate on August 9, the CJI at an event organised by Supreme Court Advocates on Record Association called him a "warm person" who dedicated his career to the judiciary. Speaking to an audience comprising judges of the top court and high court aside from senior lawyers and their family members the CJI said Justice Dhulia would vacate his official residence, a day after his retirement. "We will always remember his contribution to the judiciary. After retirement, he is going to be in Delhi, and he'll be one of the judges who will be vacating the house immediately. On the next day of his retirement," the CJI said. Interestingly, a month ago in an unprecedented move, the Supreme Court administration wrote to the Centre to vacate the official residence of the Chief Justice of India at Krishna Menon Marg in Delhi, noting former CJI DY Chandrachud had stayed beyond the permissible period. Earlier in August, however, Justice Chandrachud vacated the official residence of the head of the judiciary. Referring to his and Justice Dhulia's situation, the CJI said, "As a matter of fact, that's a rarity. I wish I would also be in a position to do it till November 24. I won't find time to find a suitable house, but I can assure you that whatever time is permissible as per the rules, I'll be shifting before that. But Justice Dhulia has set a very good example. I am sure that many of us can emulate him." Justice Dhulia was a part of numerous judgements in the apex court, including the hijab ban case from Karnataka in which he dissented with the majority view and held there should be no restriction on the wearing of hijab anywhere in the schools and colleges of the state. When speakers lauded the verdict, Justice Dhulia said, "Let me tell you I was not defending the Hijab. What I was defending was the choice of women to wear Hijab. If I have a judicial philosophy, then I can only say that my judicial philosophy is everything is around the human being. Everything which is for the benefit of a human being is my judicial philosophy." The outgoing judge lauded the contributions of advocates-on-record and asked them to gear up for "their importance rises with the rise in litigation" and indicated that he would speak more on Friday, his last working day. In April, a bench headed by Justice Dhulia ruled Urdu language was born in this land and described it as the finest specimen of "Ganga Jamuni tahzeeb". The bench said considering it a language of Muslims was a "pitiable digression" from reality and unity in diversity. Justice Dhulia was born on August 10, 1960 and completed schooling in Dehradun, Allahabad and Lucknow. He was elevated as a permanent Judge of Uttarakhand High Court on November 1, 2008 and took oath as the Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court on January 10, 2021 before being elevated to the top court on May 9, 2022. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
Mint
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Meet Justice AS Oka, SC judge who returns to work on last day - two days after mother's death
Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka, the third-most senior judge of the Supreme Court, will retire on 24 May. Justice AS Oka is scheduled to deliver 11 verdicts on Friday, his last working day – two days after the death of his mother. Justice Oka was informed about the death of his mother, Vasanti Oka in Mumbai on 21 May after , after attending a felicitation by the Supreme Court Advocates on Record Association (SCOARA). Her funeral was held in his ancestral home in Thane around on Thursday. Justice Oka attended the funeral. A day after attending his mother's funeral, Justice Oka will sit in the court today. One of the cases that Justice Oka is scheduled to hear today is a suo motu case that the Supreme Court took up on the right to privacy of adolescents in the backdrop of controversial remarks made by the Calcutta High Court last year. After delivering the verdicts, Justice Oka is expected to sit in Court number 1 with Chief Justice of India BR Gavai. 'The Ceremonial Bench comprising Hon'ble the Chief Justice, Hon'ble Mr. Justice Abhay S Oka and Hon'ble Mr Justice Augustine George Masih in Chief Justice's Court will sit after the pronouncement of judgments in Court No. 3,' a notice by the SC for lawyers read. Justice Oka met his mother last week when he had gone to Mumbai to attend a function organised in honour of Chief Justice of India BR Gavai. 'I don't approve [of] one tradition which is followed in the Supreme Court that [the] retiring judge should not work on the last day. It will take some time for us to get rid of that tradition but at least I have one satisfaction that [on the] last day, I will be sitting in a regular bench and pronouncing some judgments,' Justice Oka said at theSCOARA felicitation asserting that he 'hates' the word retirement and instead of thinking of retirement, he took on more work in the last couple of months. Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka was born on 25 May, 1960. He did BSc, LLM. From University Of Bombay and was enrolled as an Advocate on 28 June, 1983. Justice Oka began practice at the Thane District Court in the chamber of his father. He was elevated as an additional judge of the Bombay High Court on August 29, 2003, and became a permanent judge on November 12, 2005. On May 10, 2019, he took oath as the Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court. He was appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court on August 31, 2021. Justice Oka is known for judgements protecting personal liberties and free speech. As Karnataka HC Chief Justice, a bench he headed had declared that prohibitory orders imposed by the Bengaluru police to curb protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act were illegal. As SC judge, Justice Oka's bench had quashed an FIR against a Maharashtra college professor booked for his WhatsApp status critical of the abrogation of Article 370 and for wishing Pakistan on its independence day. 'Every citizen of India has a right to be critical of the action of abrogation of Article 370 and the change of status of Jammu and Kashmir,' the bench had said in March last year. Introducing Justice Oka during Wednesday's felicitation, SCAORA Secretary Nikhil Jain said, "His judgments resonated across the fabric of our civil society. His deep legal acumen and humaneness set him apart always. His judgments were always grounded and far reaching." I don't approve [of] one tradition which is followed in the Supreme Court that [the] retiring judge should not work on the last day. SCAORA President Vipin Nair said that from being a passionate lawyer to an exemplary jurist, Justice Oka has an intimate understanding of the proceedings of the bar. "He has stood like an unshakable rock. We must not forget Oak tree is the strongest in the wild. I was told that a court stenographer lost many of the drafts and Justice Oka recreated all of them," Nair was quoted as saying by legal news website Bar and Bench.
Scroll.in
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Scroll.in
Why Bela Trivedi retired from Supreme Court as a deeply unpopular judge
'I expected your ladyship to have some empathy,' lawyer Kapil Sibal recalled telling Justice Bela Madhurya Trivedi after she had refused his client's request for transfer from Karnataka to Kerala in a matter involving the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. 'You don't know me then,' Trivedi had shot back. On May 16, Sibal, the Supreme Court Bar Association's president narrated this anecdote in front of the ceremonial bench constituted to honour Justice Trivedi on her last working day. Sibal was taking a dig at the reputation Trivedi had developed: a judge who was likely to reject bail applications, especially in politically sensitive cases. And someone who, especially in the last few months of her tenure, frequently clashed with lawyers. This led to the Supreme Court Bar Association and the Supreme Court Advocates on Record Association both declining to give her a farewell. Trivedi could have been remembered as a trailblazer. She is one of only eleven women to have been a judge at the Supreme Court and the only female Supreme Court judge hailing from Gujarat. Beginning her judicial career in 1995 as a city civil and sessions court judge in Ahmedabad, she is also a rare district court judge whose career trajectory took her all the way up to the Supreme Court. For judges in the lower judiciary, elevation as a High Court judge is usually the highest office they can rise to. Instead, she will be remembered as a deeply unpopular judge. Scroll looks back at her controversial near-four-year tenure at the Supreme Court. Justice Bela Trivedi will be remembered as perhaps one of the worst judges to have ever served on the Supreme Court of India. She was nasty to lawyers, reluctant to grant relief in matters of personal liberty - and often behaved with an imperiousness incongruent with the… — Jai Anant Dehadrai (@jai_a_dehadrai) May 16, 2025 No bail outs Trivedi was elevated to the Supreme Court from the Gujarat High Court in August 2021. According to a study by the Supreme Court Observer, till October 2024, almost 40% of the judgements authored by her as a Supreme Court judge were in criminal law matters – an unusually large number. Her track record in many of these showed that she went against the oft-repeated adage by the Supreme Court that 'bail is the rule, jail is the exception'. The most well-known example of this was her denial of bail to activist and scholar Umar Khalid. The bail plea of Khalid, arrested in a conspiracy case involving the 2020 Delhi riots, was listed before a bench led by Trivedi over a dozen times without any hearing over 14 months. Finally, seeing the writing on the wall, he withdrew his petition from the Supreme Court, choosing to try his luck in lower courts instead. In 2024, a bench led by Trivedi dismissed bail applications by two other accused in the case – activists Gulfisha Fatima and Sharjeel Imam – on the grounds that their bail applications were already pending before the Delhi High Court. Paradoxically, Fatima and Imam had approached the apex court for intervention since the Delhi High Court had been sitting on their bail applications for over two and a half years at that point. Fatima and Imam have been imprisoned for over five years now. A Scroll report earlier this year showed that there is no substantive evidence that has been presented against Khalid, Fatima, Imam or the other accused in the case. Trivedi stayed the bail granted by a High Court to another young activist, Mahesh Raut, arrested in the Bhima Koregaon conspiracy case, in which academics and activists were accused of inciting caste violence during a 2018 commemoration of Dalit soldiers who had defeated the Marathas. Raut, who had been in detention since 2018, was given bail by the Bombay High Court in September 2023. In its order, the High Court wrote that it 'cannot be said that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accusations against [Raut] is prima-facie true'. However, the court stayed its bail order for one week at the National Investigation Agency's request to permit it to challenge the order before the Supreme Court. The agency's appeal against the High Court's bail order came up before a bench led by Trivedi. Trivedi ordered that the bail order remain suspended till the appeal is decided. The appeal remains pending and Raut continues to be incarcerated despite being granted bail almost two years ago. A bench involving Trivedi had in October 2022 suspended a Bombay High Court order acquitting former Delhi University professor GN Saibaba and five others in a case in which Saibaba and the others were sentenced to life imprisonment for having alleged links with left-wing extremist groups. The bench assembled on a Saturday – a court holiday – only a day after the High Court's order. Saibaba was eventually acquitted and released by the Bombay High Court in March 2024. He passed away seven months later. In an interview with Scroll after his release, the activist – who was differently abled and used a wheelchair – said he was denied adequate medical care and dignified living conditions in jail. Trivedi was also notorious for denying bail to Opposition leaders. In March 2024, a bench led by Trivedi not only refused bail to Aam Aadmi Party leader Satyendar Jain in an alleged money-laundering case, but also cancelled his interim bail for health reasons and asked the former Delhi minister to surrender immediately. Jain was eventually granted bail by a lower court later that year. A few days later, another bench involving her did not grant bail to Bharat Rashtra Samithi leader K Kavitha, arrested for her alleged involvement in the Delhi liquor policy scam case. Instead, she was asked to approach a lower court, even though the Supreme Court is empowered to grant bail. Another bench of the Supreme Court eventually granted her bail in August 2024. In November 2023, her bench denied bail to then Tamil Nadu Minister and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader V Senthil Balaji. Balaji had been arrested in June that year for allegedly conspiring with transport corporation officials to appoint candidates recommended by his aides. He was eventually granted bail by a different bench of the court in September last year. Apart from rejecting bail applications, Trivedi would also cancel bail granted by High Courts. For example, the son of a Janata Dal (United) legislator, members of the Popular Front of India and businessmen accused of defrauding banks had their bails reversed by Trivedi. The Supreme Court rarely cancels bail granted by a High Court, that too in only extraordinarily limited circumstances. Due to Trivedi's penchant for bail denial, academic Hany Babu, arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case, Salim Malik, booked and arrested as an accused in Delhi riots larger conspiracy case and former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, arrested at that time in the alleged Delhi liquor policy scam, were among many who, like Khalid, tactically withdrew their bail applications from the Supreme Court when they were listed before Trivedi. Out-of-turn case allocation So controversial was Trivedi that one of the criticisms often applied to former Chief Justice DY Chandrachud was that he often arbitrarily listed bail cases involving political dissenters or opposition members before her. In December 2023, Article 14 drew attention to eight politically-sensitive matters being moved before Trivedi, contrary to the Supreme Court's rules of case assignment. According to these rules, cases must be heard by the senior judge before whom the case was first listed or listed before a judge hearing a similar case. Senior Advocate Dushyant Dave and lawyer Prashant Bhushan wrote separate letters highlighting irregularities in case listing at the Supreme Court and the allocation of particular cases to Trivedi's bench under Chandrachud. However, such strictness was not extended by her to cases involving members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party or its ideological supporters. In August 2024, a bench led by her rejected petitions seeking the cancellation of bail granted to one of the Hindutva ideologueas accused of plotting the assassination of journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh. In January 2024, another bench led by her granted protection from arrest to BJP Union Minister Nisith Pramanik, who was accused in an attempt to murder case. A few days earlier, the same bench upheld the acquittal of Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Mishra Teni in a 2000 murder case. Between 2004 and 2006, while she was a district court judge, Trivedi was deputed as Law Secretary to the Gujarat state government headed by Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Clashes with lawyers Apart from her rulings, Trivedi was also unpopular due to her frequent clashes with lawyers in her court. In a high-profile instance last year, she ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation probe against lawyers accused of filing a fake petition in the Supreme Court using a forged authorisation document. Despite appeals from senior bar leaders for leniency, she refused to reconsider. She has also challenged routine courtroom practices. In October, she declined to record a lawyer's presence in the court order because he had not made any arguments. This is contrary to standard practice – only some of the lawyers engaged by a litigant argue before court, but the presence of all of them is recorded in orders. In February, she questioned whether a lawyer could appear on behalf of another, prompting a senior advocate to step in and clarify that such representation is permitted by Supreme Court rules. In March, she initiated contempt proceedings against two lawyers for allegedly including false statements in a petition. When the filing advocate couldn't attend virtually due to poor internet access in his village, she ordered his physical presence along with travel tickets to prove his claim that he was not in Delhi. Her refusal to believe the advocate did not sit well with the bar. The contempt order was withdrawn after strong opposition from the bar. Most recently, in April, she took a tough stand against a lawyer accused of misconduct, rejecting his apology and instead imposing a one lakh rupees fine and a one-month practice ban. Her co-judge on the bench had favoured leniency. During the hearing, Justice Trivedi remarked that she was under pressure from the legal fraternity to go easy on fellow lawyers – pressure she said she would not yield to.
