With yet another Division Bench of the Kerala High Court on Tuesday recusing itself from hearing the Piravom church case, it has earned the distinction of a case being recused by four Division Benches.
The Bench of Justices K. Harilal and Annie John was the fourth Bench to bow out of hearing the case.
When the case came up for hearing, Justice K. Harilal said Justice Annie John wanted to recuse herself from hearing the case. The Bench, therefore, ordered that case files be placed before the Chief Justice for referring it to another Bench.
The case related to a plea for police protection by the Orthodox faction of the Malankara Church for implementing a Supreme Court judgment in the matter of temporal and spiritual administration of the church. A petition by the Jacobite faction seeking a directive to settle the issue amicably is also tagged with the case.
Originally, a Division Bench of Justices P.R Ramachandra Menon and Devan Ramachandran had started hearing the case. However, the Bench on December last recused itself from hearing the case when a counsel for a Jacobite parishioner took exemption to the Bench hearing the case on the ground that Justice Devan Ramachandran had appeared for a faction while he was practising as a lawyer.
