The Registrar General of the Madras High Court on Thursday submitted before the First Division Bench a report received by him from the State government stating that none of the 23 District Judges appointed last year had a criminal background as claimed by a writ petitioner.
Nevertheless, the Bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice S. Manikumar directed the Public Department Secretary to file an affidavit within a month with respect to criminal antecedents, if any, of the appointees since the petitioner’s counsel, W. Peter Ramesh Kumar, insisted on a detailed inquiry.
During the course of the hearing of the writ petition, the Chief Justice told the counsel that as per the report submitted to the Registrar General, only one District Judge was said to be involved in an altercation with a bus driver when he was a lawyer but that case had ended up in a compromise between them.
The report also stated that one more District Judge had contested the 2006 Assembly elections as an Independent candidate when he was a lawyer and that he was an active member of the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) until 2009 which was much before his appointment.
Immediately, Mr. Kumar intervened to claim that the District Judge had burnt a copy of the Constitution when he was associated with the MDMK. Replying to this, the Chief Justice said that it would be difficult to accept the claim when there was nothing on record to prove it.
“Contesting elections per se cannot be considered wrong since we have had eminent jurists like Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer who had been a Minister before becoming a judge,” the Chief Justice said.
Though the petitioner had accused yet another District Judge of having involved in a scuffle with other lawyers outside the chambers of the Chief Justice in 2004, that particular judge had denied any such involvement and the police too could not fix his identity.
“We have obtained details about this judge from the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry under the Right to Information Act. His residential address was near Chennai for all correspondences but when it came to applying for the post of District Judge, he chose to mention a Tirunelveli address,” the counsel said.
