Delhi High Court Fines Advocate 10K For 'Outrageous Aspersions' On Judge, Alleging 'Scam In Govt Service'

A division bench of Justice C Hari Shankar and Justice Girish Kathpalia in its order said, “No litigant, much less an advocate appearing as litigant in person, can be allowed to try to browbeat the court. Of course, the court should not be over sensitive. But when despite the court repeatedly ignoring such conduct of the litigant and repeatedly advising him to confine his submissions to merits of the case, the litigant contumaciously continues efforts to overawe, the least the court should do is to bring that conduct on record. We feel constrained to record such unacceptable conduct of the Review Petitioner, who is a practising Advocate appearing in person.”

The Court noted that prior to the present review petition, the petitioner had filed another review petition, "containing highly outrageous aspersions on the Hon'ble Judge of the bench, who had authored the judgment under review". In the earlier review plea the petitioner had alleged since the judgment review of which was sought had been authored on “the last day” of the Judge before his elevation as Chief Justice of another Court, not just the judgment was wrong but it led to gross failure of justice for “pure fault of the court”. 

"We took strong objection to the tone and tenor of the petition, so vide order dated 18.10.2024 the review petitioner, expressing regrets sought permission to withdraw the same with liberty to file afresh with temperate language," the court said. 

The case arose out of a Central Administrative Tribunal's (CAT) order, which dismissed the petitioner's application for recruitment to the post of administrative officer at Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). When he did not selected for the post he challenged the recruitment before the CAT alleging that the interview was not conducted fairly and despite securing the highest score in the written test, he did not get selected. However, the CAT dismissed his application on the ground that the criteria laid down for selection were correctly followed by the authorities.

The petitioner filed a petition before the High Court against CAT's order. It was dismissed by a coordinate bench of the High Court. The petitioner then filed a review petition against the judgment dismissing his petition. The court noted that when the petitioner argued the review petition before it, during the course of the arguments, the petitioner alleged that the judgment under review is a cut-copy-paste of the CAT's order. The petitioner had said that acting on “recommendations”, there is a concerted effort at covering up a “scam in government service”, the court noted. 

The Court remarked, “Despite our dictating the ordersheet thereby reserving the judgment, the petitioner insisted that we could not reserve judgment and were bound to pronounce the operative portion before him. We also brought to his notice that we were sitting in a Special Bench and had our respective Single Bench matters also to be taken up, but he continued to insist that we should pass the operative part of the order immediately and dismiss the Review Petition, constraining us to pass a brief order clarifying that there is no legal compulsion on us to do so while reserving orders on the present review petition.”

The high court further observed that the  legal position on the scope of review proceedings is well settled. It said that the fact that on some earlier occasion, the Court recorded some prima facie observation on same set of facts that would not per se be conclusive.

"Similarly, even if some statement in the order under review was wrong, it would not follow that it was an “error apparent on the face of the record”, for there is a distinct which is real, though it might not always be capable of exposition between a mere erroneous decision and a decision which could be characterised as vitiated by “error apparent”. A review is by no means an appeal in disguise whereby an erroneous decision is reheard and corrected. Review lies only for patent error...In exercise of jurisdiction under Order 47 Rule 1 CPC it is not permissible for an erroneous decision to be “reheard and corrected”. A review petition, it must be remembered has limited purpose and cannot be allowed to be an appeal in disguise," it said. 

In the present case, the Court said that the petitioner "cherry-picked sentences" from the judgment, ignoring the overall discussion and analysis of the rival contentions. It noted that the judgment does not show that there is an apparent error on the face of record. The judgment, read in its entirety clearly shows that there is no error, what to say of error apparent on the face of record, it said. 

It then said, “The petitioner did not even whisper any irregularity till he was rejected on account of his lowest score”. 

Finding no error apparent on the record, the high court dismissed the review petition finding devoid of merit and frivolous. It also imposed a cost of Rs. 10,000 on the petitioner.

Case title: Ravi Kumar vs. Department Of Space And Ors.

Citation: 2024 LiveLaw (Del) 1211

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