NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has ordered the sacking of a trial judge in Karnataka, holding that a judicial officer can’t pronounce the concluding portion of a judgment in the open court without the entire text of the judgment having been prepared or dictated.
The SC direction came on a plea filed by the Registrar General of the Karnataka High Court, who had challenged the HC’s Division Bench order on the judge’s reinstatement by quashing the termination order passed by its full court.
Coming down heavily on the Karnataka High Court for “white-washing” serious charges, a SC bench of justices V Ramasubramanian and Pankaj Mithal said the conduct of the judge was unacceptable.
The top court said the HC was swayed unduly by the animosity attributed by the judge to a member of the local Bar and the assistant public prosecutor in granting him relief.
“It is true that some of the charges revolve around judicial pronouncements and the judicial decision-making processes and that they cannot per se, without anything more, form the foundation for departmental proceedings. Therefore, we are ignoring those charges. But the charges which revolve around gross negligence and callousness on the part of the respondent in not preparing/dictating judgments, but providing a fait accompli, is completely unacceptable and unbecoming of a judicial officer,” the top court said.
The defence taken by the judge that the lack of experience and the inefficiency on the part of the stenographer had to be blamed was entirely unacceptable, it said.