A rare nudge from the Chief Justice of India has led a Supreme Court bench to withdraw an equally unusual order, averting a possible conflict with a high court that could have triggered a constitutional stalemate.
The original order of August 4 had barred an Allahabad High Court judge, Justice Prashant Kumar, from hearing criminal matters for the rest of his career.
This was because Justice Kumar had allowed a criminal case to continue despite it being a civil dispute, on the grounds that civil cases take much longer to conclude.
Allahabad High Court judges, however, rallied behind Justice Kumar.
Some 13 of the judges wrote an open letter to Chief Justice Arun Bhansali of the high court on August 7, asking him to ignore the apex court’s August 4 judgment. They also requested a “full court meeting”, that is, a meeting of all the judges of the high court.
A constitutional crisis seemed to be brewing because, while high courts are subordinate to the apex court in judicial powers, administrative decisions like assigning benches and cases to judges is the sole prerogative of the high court chief justice.
On Thursday, Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai helped defuse the tensions by gently nudging the bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice R. Mahadevan to delete the controversial portions of their August 4 judgment.
On Friday, the bench did exactly that. “We have received an undated letter from Hon’ble the Chief Justice of India requesting us to reconsider the directions issued by us in Paras 25 and 26 respectively of our order dated 04th August, 2025…,” Friday’s order from the bench said.
“…We directed the Registry to re-notify the main matter for the purpose of considering the request made by Hon’ble the Chief Justice of India. Accordingly, the matter has been renotified today.”
The bench reaffirmed the part of the August 4 judgment that had set aside the high court verdict -- which had allowed the civil suit to continue as a criminal case -- and sent the matter back for fresh consideration.
However, it deleted parts of that judgment that asked the high court chief justice to “assign this matter to any other judge”, make Justice Kumar sit on a division bench “with a seasoned senior judge”, and not assign any criminal case to him “till he demits office”.
“…We leave it to the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court to look into the matter (assignment of criminal matters to Justice Kumar),” Friday’s order said.
It added: “At the outset, we must clarify that our intention was not to cause embarrassment or cast aspersions on the concerned Judge…. However, when matters cross the threshold and the dignity of the institution is imperilled, it becomes the constitutional responsibility of this Court to intervene….”
It said the now-deleted directives had been issued “keeping in mind the observation in Para 27” of the August 4 order.
Paragraph 27 had said the (harsher) directives were being issued “keeping in mind that the impugned order is not the only erroneous order of the concerned Judge that we have looked into for the first time. Many such erroneous orders have been looked into by us over a period of time.”
Friday’s order said the apex court had always been ready to record its appreciation of high court orders that were “legally unimpeachable” and “ensured complete justice”.
However, it added: “The high courts are not separate islands that can be disassociated from this Institution and we reiterate that whatever was said in our order was to ensure that the dignity and authority of the judiciary as a whole is maintained high in the minds of the people of this country….”
It emphasised: “We fully acknowledge that the Chief Justice of a High Court is the master of the roster. But, as observed above, our directions are absolutely not interfering with the administrative power of the Chief Justice of the High Court. When matters raise institutional concerns affecting the rule of law, this Court may be compelled to step in and take corrective steps.”