Supreme Court Issues Notice For Aggravated Contempt To Lawyer For Asking NCLT To Ignore SC Order
The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to an advocate for "aggravated contempt of court" for asking the National Company Law Tribunal to ignore an order passed by the Top Court as "nullity". In his application filed in the NCLT, the lawyer had stated that the Supreme Court's order dated 23.09.2022 was a nullity as one of the members of the bench which passed the order was related to the...
The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to an advocate for "aggravated contempt of court" for asking the National Company Law Tribunal to ignore an order passed by the Top Court as "nullity".
In his application filed in the NCLT, the lawyer had stated that the Supreme Court's order dated 23.09.2022 was a nullity as one of the members of the bench which passed the order was related to the other side. The notable fact in this episode is that the judge, who was allegedly related with the the party, was not at all a member of the bench which passed the order dated 23.09.2022.
The lawyer, Advocate Deepak Khosla, is already facing one contempt proceedings in the Supreme Court. In that contempt proceeding, Khosla's application was brought to the attention of a bench comprising Justices BR Gavai, Vikram Nath, and Sanjay Karol.
When questioned by the bench, Khosla's lawyer Senior Advocate Salman Khurshid admitted that the application was indeed filed by him. The bench further asked who was the judge the lawyer referring to in the application (the application had not named the judge). At this juncture, Khosla, who was personally present in the court, mentioned the name of Justice PS Narasimha. He said that the application was filed inadvertently, as he got confused since Justice Narasimha(before his elevation as SC judge) was nominated as an arbitrator by the opposite party.
However, the bench was unwilling to accept this defence. The bench noted that Justice Narasimha was not a part of the bench which passed the order dated 23.09.2022 and it was passed by a bench of Justices BR Gavai and CT Ravikumar. When asked by the bench if those judges had any relations with the opposite party, Khosla replied in the negative.
Harshly rebuking the delinquent advocate, the bench wrote :
“Deepak Khosla is not an ordinary litigant. He has a rich experience of fighting litigation before this Court, the high courts and various other courts, though maybe in limited matters. We could have understood a layman being inadvertently getting confused between the members of the bench, who were party to the order. But a lawyer and a party-in-person, who is day in and day out before various courts cannot be given the benefit of ignorance particularly so, when he is already facing number of contempt proceedings, it is difficult to believe that the said statement was made inadvertently.”
The bench further said that every litigant and particularly those who were lawyers by profession should be cautious while making any averment in their pleadings. Citing M.Y. Sharif v. The Hon’ble Judges of the High Court of Nagpur [1955 AIR SC 19] in which it was held that even a lawyer who was a signatory to derogatory averments would be guilty of committing contempt, the bench stated that the application filed by Khosla was an attempt to lower the esteem of the Supreme Court and to browbeat the NCLT.
“When an order is passed by this court staying the impugned order, making an application before the NCLT, New Delhi, that the tribunal should proceed further with the hearing of the matter, irrespective of the status quo granted by this Court, is nothing else but making an attempt to bring the dignity of the highest court of the country in lower esteem. It is nothing else but an attempt to browbeat the members of the tribunal. Such a conduct, in our view, by the party, who is already facing a number of contempt proceedings is nothing else but committing an aggravated contempt.”
The bench concluded by directing notice to be issued to the advocate, “calling upon him to show cause as to why an action for committing aggravated contempt of the court [should] be not taken against him”.
Case Details
In Re. Court on its Own Motion v. Deepak Khosla | SMC (Crl) No 1/2016