Delhi High Court judge Suwarana Kanta Sharma has clearly responded to the allegations regarding her son and daughter’s work as government lawyers, as she refused to recuse herself from a case against AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal among others.
Kejriwal alleged conflict of interest since Tushar Mehta, who leads the government’s litigation work as Solicitor General, is the CBI’s counsel in the Delhi excise policy (liquor sales) corruption case, in which Kejriwal was among the 23 accused who were all released by a trial court.
The CBI has appealed the release order, and Justice Sharma is hearing it in the Supreme Court, where Kejriwal wanted her to step down due to his “fear of bias”.
She heard the arguments as a single judiciary, and said Monday in her order that accepting the reasoning regarding her children would disqualify many judges across the country from hearing cases involving governments or political figures, if their relatives are appointed to governments.
“No connection shown”
“Even if the relatives of this court are members of a government committee, it is important for the litigant to show the impact of that on the instant case,” Justice Sharma noted.
“No such relationship has been shown,” she said, adding that “this court is adequately trained not to care about social media,” responding to online chatter about this case.
“Just because a judge takes an oath, a family does not swear an oath that they will not enter the profession,” she said. The litigant, Kejriwal, in this case, “cannot dictate how the judge’s children or family members should live their lives.”
In an affidavit filed a day after Justice Sharma reserved her judgment on the disqualification petitions, Kejriwal said her son has been appointed as a Group ‘A’ counsel representing the Center before the Supreme Court, while her daughter has been appointed as a Group ‘C’ counsel representing the Center before the Supreme Court and also acting as an advocate for the Center before the Delhi High Court.
“If a politician’s wife can be a politician, and if politicians’ children can enter politics, how can there be a question about a judge’s children entering the legal profession? The argument raises a larger question about what exactly is being insinuated,” she said as she dictated.
“The Quiet Weight of Being a Judge”
Justice Sharma also said: “As I began writing this judgement, silence fell over the courtroom. What remained was the quiet heaviness of being a judge sworn in in India, a Bharat. I realized that my silence as a judge had been tested in itself, and the question was now about the justice of the judge and the institution itself.”
She said that my natural instinct would have been to resign, “but for the sake of the institution, I decided to decide on the request because it raises questions not only for me, but for the institution itself.”
She also denied Kejriwal’s other arguments linked to her attendance at events allegedly linked to the RSS, the parent body of the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party; About Union Home Minister Amit Shah who said that Kejriwal will eventually have to file a case in the Supreme Court against the HC’s order in the case.
The main case – the CBI’s challenge against the lower court’s discharge order – will now continue to be heard by Justice Sharma.
