Patna, Jan. 7: The counsel for Patna Municipal Corporation today filed an affidavit requesting Justice Navaniti Prasad Singh to recuse himself from the case of Kuldip Narayan's suspension in the interest of justice.

The respondent (PMC)'s counsel, Prasoon Sinha, filed the affidavit in his personal capacity. It was addressed to Chief Justice L. Narasimha Reddy. In it, Sinha urged Justice Navaniti Prasad Singh to recuse himself from hearing the case, claiming he was biased against his client (read Kuldip Narayan).

He claimed that Justice Singh in the past had issued adverse remarks against Narayan in a different case.

The arguments remained inconclusive and the matter would again come up for hearing on Thursday.

PMC commissioner Narayan was suspended by the government on December 12, 2014 for his alleged failure to carry out works assigned to him. On December 15, the division bench of Justice V.N. Sinha and Justice P.K. Jha, while hearing a PIL, had stayed the suspension of PMC commissioner Narayan.

The same day, hearing a separate PIL on waste management, the division bench of then acting Chief Justice Iqbal Ahmed Ansari and Justice A.K. Trivedi had refused to take up the suspension issue.

Following this, the principal additional advocate-general, Lalit Kishore, had requested the court of the acting chief justice to constitute a full bench to clear doubts arising out of two different views of the benches.

Justice Ansari constituted a full bench that apart from himself, had Justice V.N. Sinha and Justice Navaniti Prasad Singh as the other two judges.

The full bench, on the December 18 hearing, refused to give any directive in the case after lawyers present in court started shouting and claiming the bench was not hearing the points being raised by the PMC counsel.

While Prasoon Sinha sought removal of Justice Singh from the full bench, senior PMC counsel Y.V. Giri challenged the constitution of the full bench, which he claimed could be formed only by the chief justice and not the acting chief justice.

He also said: 'The two orders passed by the two division benches of the high court on December 15, 2014, were not conflicting in nature so the constitution of the full bench was itself wrong.'

He added: 'When a division bench of the court had reserved its order, how can another bench refer the case to a full bench?'

Lawyer Sinha, in his affidavit addressed to Chief Justice Reddy, held Justice Singh was biased against his client, as clear from a contempt hearing on November 5 and 7, 2014.

The PMC commissioner was a party in the case and Justice Singh had said: 'I have been waiting for the case of Mr Kuldip Narayan to be listed before me so that he could be sent behind the bars from the court.'