The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed Justice Yashwant Varma's petition challenging the in-house judges' panel probe into the alleged discovery of wads of unaccounted currency notes during a fire at the outhouse of his Delhi residence in March.
The three-member panel and the then Chief Justice of India, Sanjiv Khanna, had recommended his removal to the President.
A bench of Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Augustine George Masih, however, accepted the contention of Justice Varma that releasing a video of the alleged currency recovery and the inquiry report on the Supreme Court website and in the public domain should not have been done.
The apex court rejected Justice Varma's contention that the in-house panel's recommendation had prejudiced the possible impeachment proceedings in Parliament, saying members of the two Houses were expected to act independently without being influenced by the panel's report.
"The CJI, as the leader of the judiciary, apart from his various other duties, owes a duty to the people of the country to keep the justice delivery system pure, clean and unpolluted. It is unreasonable to even think that despite an incident of the present nature, the CJI would wait for Parliament to take action. As observed before, it is up to Parliament whether or not to activate Article 124. Left to him, the CJI, upon being informed of a Judge's remissness, does have the authority — moral, ethical and legal — to take such necessary action as is warranted to keep institutional integrity intact. Any adverse impact on the credibility of the institution could prove dear," Justice Datta, who authored the judgment, observed.
The three-member judges' panel had earlier held that there was evidence of "unimpeachable character" to hold that massive amounts of unaccounted currency notes were destroyed in the fire at the 30 Tughlak Crescent residence of Justice Varma on May 14 and his "misconduct found proved is serious enough to call for initiation of proceedings (impeachment) for removal of Justice Varma, Judge of Allahabad High Court".
The panel of Justice Sheel Nagu, Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court; Justice G.S. Sandhawalia, Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh High Court; and Justice Anu Sivaraman of Karnataka High Court was constituted on March 22 by Justice Khanna for conducting an inquiry into the allegations against Justice Varma, who was a sitting judge of Delhi High Court, and subsequently repatriated to Allahabad High Court following the incident.
"The argument that the members of either or both Houses of Parliament could be influenced by the CJI's opinion is not acceptable since the opinion is not forwarded either to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha or to the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. For argument's sake, even if it is assumed that members of Parliament have had access to the recommendation/ advice of the CJI, if any, nothing much turns on it," the apex court said.