'You Can't Seek In-House Inquiry Against Judge For Denying Relief' : CJI DY Chandrachud To Litigant

Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud on Monday (September 30) took exception to a litigant seeking in-house enquiry against a judge for not granting him relief.

The litigant, a party-in-person, was mentioning a petition in which he had added retired Chief Justice of India Justice Ranjan Gogoi as a respondent. He said that the petition was filed in May 2018.

Expressing surprise and dismay at the petition, CJI told the party :

"How can you file a PIL with the judge as a respondent? There has to be some dignity. You cannot just say I want an in-house inquiry against a judge. Justice Ranjan Gogoi was a former judge of the Supreme Court. He retired as the Chief Justice of India. You cannot say I want an in-house inquiry against a judge because you did not succeed before the bench. Sorry, we cannot tolerate this."

The litigant said that Justice Gogoi had wrongfully dismissed his petition, challenging his termination from service, relying on an illegal statement and that there were "gross errors of law" in the judgment.

"Right or wrong, there is a final judgment by the Supreme Court. Your review has been dismissed. Now you have to file a curative. But you say you don't want to file a curative," CJI told him.

When the litigant, who said he hailed from Pune, started making submissions in Marathi, CJI also started replying in the same language. In Marathi, CJI tried to make the party understand that a petition cannot be filed against a judge merely for denying him relief. When a High Court judgment is challenged in the Supreme Court, the High Court judge who decided the matter is not made a party, the CJI explained.

CJI Chandrachud told the party that if he deleted Justice Gogoi's name from the array of respondents, then the Registry would consider processing it. The party agreed to do so.

Don't say 'Yeah' in Court

During the hearing, the CJI also reprimanded the petitioner for using the informal "yeah".

"Don't say Yeah. Say Yes. This is not a Coffee Shop. This is a Court. I am a little allergic to people saying Yeah," CJI told him.