FRONT PAGE | Saturday, November 7, 2009 | Email | Print | 
SC serves notice on lawyer for contempt
Abraham Thomas | New Delhi
The allotment of a controversial mining lease to Sterlite in Odisha has come into the spotlight in the Supreme Court and raised fresh questions on whether judges should hear the cases of companies in which they are shareholders.
The SC on Friday issued a contempt notice against lawyer Prashant Bhushan for levelling corruption charges against Justice Kapadia for ruling in favour of Sterlite to get the mining lease. Kapadia held shares in the company.
The case against Bhushan and editor of Tehelka magazine Tarun Tejpal was filed by senior advocate Harish Salve, who is the amicus curie assisting the forest bench of the SC. Two days ago, Justice Katju recused himself from the Reliance cases on the grounds that he held shares in Mukesh Ambani’s flagship company. The Bench, also comprising Justice Kapadia and Justice Aftab Alam, did not hear the case as Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan directed the matter to be listed before a Bench not comprising Justice Kapadia.
Presenting the matter for consideration before the Bench, Salve said, “Some day we have to draw some line…we can’t have people within the system throwing bricks at the system.” He was referring to an interview given by Bhushan to Tehelka, published in its September 5 edition.
The article suggested that judicial corruption was best manifested in the case of Justice Kapadia hearing the Sterlite case despite being a shareholder.
The fact that Justice Kapadia held shares in Sterlite was made public by the judge himself before beginning of the hearing of the case. The judge had even offered to recuse on this ground. But the fact — that the parties assured their complete confidence in the judge and asked him to go ahead hearing the case — was not cited by Bhushan in his interview. This made Salve to allege that Bhushan indulged in “half-truths”.
The contemptuous portion in the magazine quoted Bhushan as saying: “There is Justice Kapadia who decided on the Niyamgiri mining lease case in Orissa…There is a law against judges hearing cases where there is a conflict of interest, but they just bypass it and you can’t complain because that would be contempt.” Bhushan did not stop at this but went on to accuse the entire judiciary. “In my view, out of the last 16 to 17 Chief Justices, half have been corrupt. I can’t prove this, though we had evidence against Punchi, Anand and Sabharwal (former CJIs) on the basis of which we sought their impeachment,” said Bhushan.
Taking offence at such sweeping allegations, Salve said, “What he has said is simply unacceptable. You can’t make such statements – that half the judiciary is corrupt but I cannot prove it – as it erodes public confidence in the judiciary.” The petition further stated that “unsubstantiated allegations” against the past Chief Judges created a doubt on who all would be guilty, which further tarnished the institution.
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